Jerusalem in Montserrat

345
AN ABSENT PRESENCE:
JERUSALEM IN MONTSERRAT*
by LILY ARAD
RESUM
Lobjectiu daquest estudi s cercar la presncia de la ciutat de Jerusalem a
la montanya i al monestir de Montserrat, principalment entre els segles setze i
dinou. Alguns mites sobre la fundaci del monestir de Montserrat foren enriquits
amb histries bbliques i temes del folklore local, creant noves arrels sagrades
per augmentar el prestigi del complex devocional del santuari.
Sorpren, per, que en una poca en qu es copiaren monuments dels llocs
sants de Jerusalemn en altres zones de la Pennsula Ibrica, les associacions
simbliques entre Montserrat i Jerusalem no hagin deixat senyals clares en els
dissenys dels seus blocs monstics. Aquesta manca fa pensar en una presncia
que es podria dir invisible de Jerusalem a Montserrat. Aquest nou exmen de les
tradicions en les fonts escrites i en les seves il . lustracions, que associen
Montserrat amb Jerusalem, mostren algun exemple de lesmentada presncia
de la Ciutat Santa i suggereix algun dels motius de la seva invisibilitat en
representacions emblemtiques del conjunt montserrat. Posteriorment,
lexmen de gravats conservats en larxiu del monestir, permetr noves
interpretacions del discurs religis i sciopoltic de les institucions catalanes
en la creaci de noves tradicions.
Paraules Clau: Montserrat, Jerusalem, segles XVI-XIX.
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to trace the absent presence of Jerusalem in Montserrat mainly
from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth century. The fundation myths and narrative
of Montserrat are seasoned with biblical and local stories and legends that refer to
Jerusalem and enhanced the prestige of the devotional complex by endowing it
* University of Jerusalem. To Jaume Figueras and Maria Figueras..

346 L ILY A RAD
with ancient sacred roots. Puzzlingly, even thoug at the time monumental
translations of Jerusalem were being created in other geo-cultural areas of the
Iberian Peninsula, Central Europe, and North Italy, in seems that the symbolical
associations to Jerusalem did not leave clear traces in the design of the complex
and its representations. This lack of correspondence has led us to think of an absent
presence of Jerusalem in Montserrat.
This re-examination of traditions and metaphors associating Montserrat with
Jerusalem turns some instances of the subtle presence of the Holy City more visible,
and suggests some reasons for its invisibility in emblematic representations of the
Catalonian mountain. Not least important, it is expected to assist us in the next
phase the examination of the unpublished images. Such study may shed an
additional light of the religious and socio-political discourse in the area and beyond
it, as well as on the reciprocity between the influential Catholic institutions in
Catalonia (and Spain as a whole) in the creation of new traditions.
Keywords: Montserrat, Jerusalem, XVI-XIX century.
Venite, ascendamus ad montem Domini, ad domum dei Jacob, calls Pere

de Burgos, abbot of Montserrat from 1512 to 1536 and its first historian,
quoting Isaiah 2, 2. Pere de Burgos places this call at the head of his Libro
dlos Milagros hechos a invocacin de nra seora de Montserrate: y dela
Fundacion Hospitalidad y Orde de su sct casa; y del Sitio della y dsus
hermitas, published as anonymous in 1536.1 The same verse is enclosed in
the illustration enhancing the book (Fig. 1),2 which appears on the first
page and invites the reader to travel through time and space to Jerusalem
in the mythical Catalonian mountain. This invitation would develop into a
rich net of symbolical associations of Montserrat with the Holy City.
The Montserrat Mountain, a cliffy massif located in the heart of Catalonia
both geographically and figuratively, houses a devotional complex that
comprises a sacred grotto, a sanctuary, hermitages, and a monastery as well
as paths to and between them. Crosses mark the paths and crown the
pinnacles of the mountain, calling to reflection and prayer. Montserrat also
is a memory site, since it allows a re-visitation of remembered events, which
in this case are legends that became part of the collective identity of Catalonia.
Narratives of supernatural character and rich in biblical associations
were adopted to enhance the prestige and influence of the monastery and
its shrine, and in this sense the history of Montserrat does not differ from
that of other sacred mountains. What differentiates Montserrat is the extent
and strength of the symbolical associations with Jerusalem that were created
between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries; the associations explain
the mountains unique shape, which is also conveyed in the etymology of
its name, the special sanctity of the statue of the Mare de Du that sacralizes
it, the symbolism of the path of Seven Joys and Seven Sorrows of the Virgin
that leads to the sanctuary, and the merits of the people of Catalonia as a
AN ABSENT PRESENCE: J ERUSALEM IN M ONTSERRAT 347
new Israel. Pere de Burgos noteworthily remarked that the mountain and
the sanctuary of the Virgin that houses her image form one inseparable
whole; God himself put them together and consecrated the site, expressing
his predilection for this territory that houses the miraculous image of his
Mother.3 Therefore, the various biblical associations and miracles create
significant layers of symbolism that have an effect on the entire devotional
set.
The exceptional shape of the massif and the many miracles worked by
the image of the Virgin are explained, emphasized, and praised in books
on the history of Montserrat, poems dedicated to the sacred mountain, and
accounts by monks, pilgrims and other travellers. As might be expected,
also the emblematic images of the Montserrat Mountain and sanctuary are
centred precisely on these two elements: the fantastically shaped mountain
and the image of the Virgin. Contrarily, narrative images add schemes of
the monastery, the hermitages, and the crosses topping the peaks, which
indeed are an integral part of the complex, but they are not paradigmatic
signifiers. The mountains singular morphology and the miraculous image
have been named in independent researches by Francesc Roma i Casanovas
and Ignasi Fernndez Terricabras, as the two main reasons for the strong
attraction that the Montserrat Mountain has held for Catalonians and peoples
from other nations for centuries. 4
1. The book is commonly referred to as Libro de la historia y milagros hechos a invocacin

de Nuestra Seora de Montserrat; it has two parts, the first is dedicated to the history of the
monastery and second to the miracles of the Virgin. The book was reedited many times and
was soon translated to German, French and Italian, exerting much influence on historians
and readers as a whole. Anselm Albareda, who wrote the most complete history of the
monastery and a bibliography of its monks in the sixteenth century, said that because of
priority of time and his personality [Pere de Burgos] merits the first place among the
historians of Montser-rat; see Anselm Albareda, Bibliografia dels monjos de Montserrat
(seglo XVI ), Analecta Montserratensia, 2 (1918), pp. 43-142 (esp. pp. 23-25, 147-54).
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portal/Abadia. Accessed 2 January 2012. Also important
is the study by Xavier Alts i Aguil, Ledici pstuma de la Histria de Montserrat de
lAbat Pedro de Burgos, Montserrat - Butllet del Santuari, 2a poca, nm. 12 (1985),
pp. 33-38.
2. Our illustration belongs to the 1550 edition by Pere de Montpezat, Barcelona.
3. Libro de la historia y milagros, I: Prolog, A4.
4. Francesc Roma i Casanovas, La construcci medial de la muntanya a Catalunya (Segles XV-
XX). Una mirada al paisatge des de la geografia cultural (unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 2000), and Ignasi Fernndez Terricabras, Montserrat,
montagne sacre. Spiritualisation du territoire montagnard dans un massif Catalan (XVIe-
XVIIIe sicles), in: Montagnes sacres dEurope. Actes du colloque Religion et montagnes,
Tarbes, 30 mai - 2 juin 2002, ed. by Serge Brunet, Dominique Julia and Nicole Lemaitre,
Histoire Moderne 49, Universit Paris I, Pantheon-Sorbonne (Paris: Publications de la
Sorbonne, 2005), pp. 193-206. See also Francesc Roma i Casanovas, El parads indicible.
Ecosimbologia del protopaisatge montserrrat modern (unpublished masters thesis, Universitat
Autonoma de Barcelona, 1999). However, the presence of Jerusalem in Montserrat was out of
the scope of their studies.
348 L ILY A RAD
The mythical interpretations of the configuration of the Catalonian
mountain and the relic it houses clearly point to Jerusalem as the source
and reason of these two phenomena. The Jerusalemite origins of these two
immanent qualities also turn the mountain and the image of the Virgin into
carriers of the special blessings of the Holy City; moreover, even though
physical similarities between Montserrat and Jerusalem seem to exist only
in these interpretations and in allegories, each and both of them justify the
perception of the Catalonian devotional complex as a symbolical translation
of Jerusalem.
We ponder why, even if Montserrat cannot be considered a regular
translation of Jerusalem, the mythic Jerusalemite origins of its two main
identifying elements, as defined in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
have not been studied in that context; this, although precisely at that time,
devotional sites presented as symbolical translations of Jerusalem became
an effective means of Catholic indoctrination that also advanced the spiritual
and material interests of the monasteries that established them.5 It also
puzzles us that the Jerusalemite origins of these two identifiers seem to
have found only subtle expression in the design of the devotional complex
and its visual images.6 If so, why did this happen?
Our examination of the presence of Jerusalem in Montserrat leads us to
think of a special kind of presence, an absent presence that regarding
Montserrat is broad in scope and long-lasting. By the concept of an absent
presence we mean the implicit references in any sort of message, differing
from the explicit contents; the absent presence is the implicit idea that
hides beyond the lines of a narrative, the sounds of a musical composition,
the margins of a painting, or the design and surrounding space of a
monument. The absent presence would be the immaterial, invisible factor
that organizes words, sounds, images and any other mediation vehicle into
something meaningful.
5. See Antonio Bonet Correa, Sacromontes y calvarios en Espaa, Portugal y America Latina,
in La Gerusalemme di San Vivaldo e i sacri monti in Europa: Firenze-San Vivaldo, 11-13
settembre 1986, ed. by Sergio Gensini, Centro internazionale di studi La Gerusalemme di San
Vivaldo, 1 (Montaione: Pacini, 1989), pp. 174-213; Jos Miguel Muoz Jimnez, Sobre la
Jerusaln Restaurada: Los calvarios barrocos de Espaa, Archivo espaol de arte, 274
(1996), pp. 157-169; Cesario Gil Atrio, Espaa, cuna del Via Crucis, Archivo Ibero-Ameri-
cano, 11 (1951), pp. 63-92; Trevor Johnson, Gardening for God: Carmelite Deserts and the
Sacralisation of Natural Space in Counter-Reformation Spain, in Sacred Space in Early
Modern Europe, ed. by Will Coster and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), pp. 193-210.
6. The visual images of the Montserrat complex have been only partially published; see Josep de
C. Laplana, La imatge de la Mare de Du de Montserrat al llarg dels segles, in: Nigra sum:
iconografia de Santa Maria de Montserrat, ed. by Josep de C. Laplana (Publicacions de
lAbadia de Montserrat, 1995), pp. 14-39; Concepcin Alarcn Romn, Las ilustraciones
marianas de la leyenda de Montserrat, Revista de dialectologa y tradiciones populares, 63:
2 (2008), pp. 169-196. Unfortunately we had to come to terms with limitations and postpone
the examination of the unpublished images until the next phase of our study.
Four factors lead to propose that Jerusalem is invisibly present in

Montserrat. Firstly, the fact that the Montserrat Mountains craggy shape is
unique and therefore an identifying signifier, and that this shape has been
explained as a mirror of the Golgotha/ Calvary Mounts split when Jesus
died on the cross; this association was first drawn sometime before the
1270s, 7 and by the mid-seventeenth century spread and replaced almost
all other traditions on the morphology of the mountain; noticeably, it was
still considered a true fact by religious authorities in the secular-minded
late nineteenth century.8 Secondly, by the 1660s the belief that the Virgins
image had been crafted by St. Luke the Evangelist in Jerusalem became
widely spread 9 a significant development since the late fourteenth-century
tradition that the prodigious image was non invenitur in quam esse manibus
hominum factam, that is to say not made by man, or that its origins were
mysterious. 10 Thirdly, by the mid-seventeenth century it was said that the
image laid buried in a cave in Montserrat as if in a tomb, and was
miraculously found because the mountain that split at the death of Jesus
revealed it at the propitious time;11 and last but not the least important:
in medieval thought copies often participated in a mystical unity with
their originals, and translated holy places, relics both primary and
secondary, and sacred images could be perceived as consubstantial with
their prototypes. In the light of these four parameters we maintain that
Jerusalem was steadily and continuously present in the devotional space
of Montserrat, in an ever growing scope from the times of the Counter-
Reformation up until the revolutionary scientific discoveries of the mid-
nineteenth century.
7. It appears in the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfons X the Wise, a rich compilation of earlier
traditions, devotional texts, poems, and musical notations. See John Keller, Montserrat in
the Cantigas, in: Collectanea
Hispanica: Folklore and Brief narrative Studies (Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1987), pp. 211-
14 (Cantiga 113), and also below.
8. See, for example, the strong statement by Miquel Muntadas i Roman, abbot of Montserrat,
in his Montserrat: su pasado, su presente y su porvenir, , lo que fu hasta su destruccion el
ao 1811, lo que es desde su destruccion y lo que ser en adelante. Historia compuesta en
vista de los documentos existentes en el archivo del monasterio, por el abad el M. Iltre. Sr. D.
Miguel Muntadas (Imprenta de Pablo Roca, cargo de Luis Roca, 1867). eBook, digitalized
30 October 2009, pp. 14-18; see also Francesc de Paula Crusellas, Nueva historia del santua-
rio y monasterio de Nuestra Seora de Monserrat (Barcelona: Tipografa catlica, 1896), pp.
15-16, and below.
9. The diffusion of this story was advanced by Friar Gregorio de Argaiz in his 1668 publication
of the false chronicles of the monk Hauberto Hispalense, affirming that the Montserrat
image of the Mare de Du had been made by St. Luke and brought by St. Peter to Barcelona.
Quoted by Xavier Alts i Aguil, La santa imatge de Montserrat i la seva morenor a travs
de la documentaci i de la histria, in La imatge de la Mare de Du de Montserrat, ed. by
Francesc Xavier Alts et al. (Publicacions de lAbadia de Montserrat, 2003), pp. 101-102.
10. Pere de Burgos, Libro de la historia y milagros, ch. 1: Historia, fol. 22.
11. Alarcn Romn, Las ilustraciones marianas, p. 186; Laplana, La imatge de la Mare de Du,
pp. 15-16.
350 L ILY A RAD
An indirect support to our proposition is the spread of various types of

translations of Jerusalem at that period of time in other geographical and
cultural areas of the Iberian Peninsula, Central Europe, and North Italy;
many of them were certainly known in Catalonia.
Indeed, within the category of visual carriers of Jerusalems presence,

the monumental recreations of the Holy City as a whole environment
differently from a translation by means of a copy of the Holy Sepulchre,
which is its most representative monument are the most prominent yet
also the least acknowledged. The presence of Jerusalem in foundation myths
and in traditions constructed to endow a site with the desired sacredness
is only now being comprehensively studied. 12
Most translations of Jerusalem as devotional complexes evoke elements
from the topography of the Holy City, or of a sacred site there, or of a
monument at a holy place and these similar elements, real or imagined,
transfer the blessings of the original. Moreover, in Christian tradition and
practice the blessings are carried from the original sacred places and
monuments in the Holy Land to their translations beyond the Land of the
Bible also through symbolical copies, 13 achieved by the adoption and
adaption of myths, by the drawing of allegorical parallels, by liturgical and
devotional practices, by relics, and even by dedications; that is to say, not
only through similarities in form or structure. Therefore, the devotional
complexes become multimedia projections of the Holy City that transport
its sacredness and blessings. To reinforce the functions of the devotional
complexes, translations of Jerusalem usually contain local elements of
religious and national importance, making them both representations of
the Holy Places and reflections of the respective local community.
Our main sources, in tracing the absent presence of Jerusalem in
Montserrat from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth century, the period
when most of the symbolical associations with Jerusalem were drawn and
continuously enriched and reinforced, are books on the history of the
Montserrat Abbey and on the cultic practices there, which were usually
written by local monks, and travel accounts by ecclesiastical visitors and
learned secular travellers. All these narratives are richly seasoned with
stories and legends, some of them rooted in ancient traditions and others
new constructs. We expect that a re-examination of the variegated traditions
12. See the research project Spectrum | Visual Translations of Jerusalem, at the European Forum
of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, http://www.spectrum.huji.ac.il/
13. See the pioneering work by Richard Krautheimer Introduction to an Iconography of Medie-
val Architecture, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), pp. 1-33, and
revised edition in: Studies in Early Christian, Medieval and Renaissance Art, ed. by James S.
Ackerman et al. (New York: New York University Press, 1969). See also the recent study by
Catherine Carver McCurrach, Renovatio Reconsidered: Richard Krautheimer and the
Iconography of Architecture, Gesta, 50: 1 (2011), pp. 41-69.
that associate Montserrat with Jerusalem in those sources will open new
paths to trace similar associations in visual media and cultic rites.
In addition, in view of the intra- and inter-regional influences between
monastic orders and institutions, the tracing of a subtle presence of
Jerusalem in Montserrat may assist us in the study of other devotional
complexes where the Holy City is variously recalled in texts and local
rituals, whereas the visual presence is less clear. Such study could shed
light on the religious and socio-political discourse in the area and beyond
it, as well as on the reciprocity between the influential Catholic institutions
in Europe and Jerusalem in the creation of new traditions.
MONTSERRAT
The Montserrat Mountain is located in the central region of Catalonia,
about 60 km from Barcelona. Montserrat, meaning sawed, or
serrated mountain, describes the peculiar aspect of this sedimentary-
rock conglomerate, which was formed as a result of differential erosion
and weathering that produced highly distinctive steep cliffs and high
peaks. In an area of about 10 by 5 km, this relatively small range amazes
by its brisk rise in steps of impressive vertical cliffs and is visible from
far away. Its uniquely shaped rocks have aroused the imagination of
locals and visitors, inspiring myths, traditions, and works of art and
literature.
Montserrat began as a series of hermitages. The earliest documents
date from 888, at the time of Count Guifred the Hairy of Barcelona, when
four small constructions were donated to the Monastery of Ripoll. 14
However, Sant Jeroni, Montserrats 1236 meters culminant point, may have
been a preferred site of hermits much earlier and the first miracles were
possibly worked through them before there was an image of the Virgin.
Recent studies have demonstrated that many Catalan shrines exist at or
near the sites of early medieval hermitages, many of them caves. This
would be an alternate historical explanation for the isolated location of
images accredited with miraculous invention legends.15
The Montserrat sanctuary is located not on one of the peaks but at an
altitude of 720 meters, at the site that according to a foundation legend was
chosen by the image of the Virgin that revealed itself in a cave in the year
880. 16 Moreover, the foundation myth of Montserrat based on the invention
of the image of the Virgin is associated to another myth: that of the repentant
monk Gari and Count Guifred, who is considered the founder of the Comtal
14. Anselm M. Albareda, Historia de Montserrat (Publicacions de lAbadia de Montserrat, 1996),

pp. 9-10.
15. William A. Christian Jr, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton
University Press, 1989), p. 113
16. Laplana, La imatge de la Mare de Du, pp. 15-16.
352 L ILY A RAD
House of Catalonia; 17 therefore religious belief and national identity are
closely interwoven.
A coenobium was founded in Montserrat in c. 1025 by Abbot Oliba of the
Monastery of Ripoll, who is acknowledged as the spiritual father of Old
Catalonia and also belonged to the family of Guifred the Hairy. The
coenobium became a monastery dependent on Ripoll in 1082, and an
independent abbey in 1409;18 in this period of time it developed and acquired
much prestige. Despite turbulent times during the nineteenth century that
twice ended in the destruction of the monastery and the expulsion of the
monks, and despite the damage suffered during the Civil War, the firm
roots of Montserrat in the collective identity of Catalonia facilitated the
reconstruction and renewed flowering of the complex.
ST. MARY THE JERUSALEMITE AND MONTSERRAT

In the late twelfth or the early thirteenth century, the Benedictine
monks of the monastery became the custodians of a miraculous statue, the
so-called Black Virgin of Montserrat or Moreneta, which is a cultic image
of the type known as marededu: the enthroned Mother of God holding the
Child on her lap. To judge by the evidence provided by the Llibre Vermell
de Montserrat, which was compiled in the monastery in c. 1399, the first
donations of candles and oil lamps were made to the altar of the Virgin in
the second half of the twelfth century.19 Yet, the donation of such objects
does not imply the presence of a sculpted image. However, a candle for
the whole Easter period that was offered in 1176, as well as perpetual oil
lamps that were offered since 1192, may indicate that the present, late
twelfth century statue already presided from the altar.20 It was at this time,
the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, that a church to house the
miracle-working image was built, and Montserrat developed its function
and tradition as a monastery and a sanctuary.
17. The story of the miraculous invention of the Virgins image and its perfect combination with
the other foundation myth, that of the monk Gari who sinned, repented and did penitence to
merit the heavenly pardon through Mary, is out of the scope of our study. This topic has been
studied by Concepcin Alarcn Romn, Clasificacin y fuentes de la leyenda de Montserrat,
Ilu. Revista de ciencias de las religiones, 12 (2007), pp. 5-28, esp. pp. 6-13.
18. Albareda, Historia de Montserrat, p. 13-14; Laplana, La imatge de la Mare de Du, pp.
17-18.
19. The manuscript (Biblioteca de lAbadia de Montserrat, MS 1) includes, among others, a
collection of theological and devotional texts, an account of miracles of the Virgin, songs and
their musical notation, privileges, indulgencies, homilies, and miniatures. See Llibre Vermell
de Montserrat (ms. 1): Edicin facsmil parcial del ms. n 1 de la Biblioteca de la Abada de
Montserrat, introd. by Dom Francesc Xavier Alts i Aguil, Llibres del millenari, 2 (Barcelo-
na: Fundaci Revista de Catalunya, 1989); Laplana, La imatge de la Mare de Du, p. 20.
20. Laplana, La imatge de la Mare de Du, pp. 18-29, observing that such statue was installed in
Santa Maria de Ripoll only in the early thirteenth century. Penitent pilgrims took part in
prayers, mass, and devotional rituals; they confessed, lighted candles and made spiritual and
material offerings in recognition for blessings and miracles, or to ask for them.
The earliest known illumination that presents the sacred marededu

appears in the Llibre Vermell,21 and not much later, in the early fifteenth
century, may have appeared the legend that dates the miraculous finding
of the sacred image in 880, at the time that the first chapels were established;
this legend was largely enriched in the following centuries.22 In the year
1668 Father Gregorio de Argaiz published the false Chronicon of the
Benedictine monk Hauberto Hispalense, which would have been written
in the tenth century and in Argaizs opinion contains many truths and
historical concordances; based on the Chronicon, Argaiz affirmed that the
marededu of Montserrat had been made in Jerusalem by St. Luke and
brought to Barcelona by St. Peter.23 This legend, which endowed much
prestige on the monastery, was rapidly spread and further elaborated. Thus,
not long after then, in the year 1675, Argaiz himself specified that the image
was crafted by the Apostle St. Luke at the time the Virgin lived her mortal
life, that is to say, looking at the original and prototype, although he could
not justify that St. Luke, who was a painter, also carved the image.24 This
process reached a climax in 1677 with the publication of Gregorio de
Argaizs influential book La Perla de Catalua: Historia de Nuestra Seora de
Monserrate. Argaiz elaborated on the legends related to the mountain, the
sacred image, and the sanctuary; he popularized the epithet of the image,
the Jerusalemite, which emphasized its invaluable origins and also the
story that it was earlier venerated in Barcelona, in a church dedicated to
her by St. Paciano as the Beatae Mariae Hyrosolimitae.25 This detailed
account further stresses the special significance of a Jerusalemite origin,
more so since many images of the Virgin were miraculously found in Spain,
France, and other areas in Europe ever since the twelfth century. Therefore,
the Montserrat marededu was an exceptional relic that could claim to be
21. Idem, p. 20.

22. Concepcin Alarcn, Las versiones medievales de la leyenda de Montserrat, Studia
monastica, 49:1 (2007), pp. 29-73 (30-32, 37-38, and esp. 50-51, 68).
23. Hauberti Hispalensis monachi benedictini chronicon. The author of the false chronicon,
Antonio de Lupin Zapata (d. 1667), was a Benedectine monk at the Monastery of Dumio
(Braga). See also Xavier Alts i Aguil, La santa imatge de Montserrat i la seva morenor a
travs de la documentaci i de la histria, in La imatge de la Mare de Du de Montserrat, ed.
by Francesc Xavier Alts et al. (Publicacions de lAbadia de Montserrat, 2003), pp. 101-102.
24. Idem, p. 102. According to Francisco de Paula de Fors Casamayor, La Estrella del Montserrat:
Impresiones y recuerdos de esta montaa y de su clebre monasterio, su descripcin, su
historia y sus tradiciones (Madrid: Librera de la Sra. Viuda hijos de D. J. Cuesta, 1867), p. 17,
Gregorio de Argaiz would have read about the Jerusalemite origins of the Virgins image in the
Chronicles of Liutprando, actually a late sixteenth century forge by the Jesuit Jeronimo
Roman de la Higuera, but Argaiz quotes both of them in his La Perla de Catalua: Historia de
Nuestra Seora de Monserrate (Madrid: Imprenta de Andrs Garcia de la Iglesia, 1677), pp.
14-15.
25. Argaiz, La Perla de Catalua, pp. 14-15. We may note as one example of his influence a
century later, the many quotations in Fors Casamayor, La Estrella del Montserrat, as in pp.
16-17.
354 L ILY A RAD
sacred because it was invested with the aura of having been crafted by St.
Luke from the image of the living Virgin, brought to Spain by St. Peter, the
prince of the Apostles and founder of the Western church, and already
proven to be a conduit of miraculous power. Such foundation legends help
to construct the sacredness of a local landscape, and they do so in a manner
that considerably predates the beginnings of Christian pilgrimage to these
sites.26
Argaiz also solved the mysterious question of the invention of the image
in a cave in the Montserrat massif, and not, as might be expected, in the
church that it sacralized, although by means of a rather conventional for-
mula: the author tells that for fear that the Muslims would invade the city
and damage the sacred image, this pearl of Catalonia was hidden in the
mountain by the Bishop of Barcelona together with Duke Eurigon on 22
April 718, as documented by the Chronicon Hispalense.27 Lastly, Argaiz
informs that the image was miraculously found in 880, that is to say, at the
time of the foundation of the chapels by Guifred the Hairy, the first Count
of Barcelona. Stereotypically, the author also tells that ecclesiastical
authorities tried to take the prodigious image to their church, but after
reaching a certain point on the mountain the image refused to be mo-
ved.28 This was a most significant heavenly sign: it was the Virgins wish to
stay in Montserrat.
Later writers follow Gregorio de Argaizs work. Significantly in our
context, they elaborate on Argaizs stories and add elements that evidence
the importance attributed to the origins of the Montserrat image in
Jerusalem. For example, in his Histria indita de Montserrat, dated a little
after 1713, Friar Miquel Lpez repeated the stories spread by Argaiz and
specified that the Virgin herself had wrapped the image in a fabric that she
had personally woven, arctissimo brandhiorum vinculo, and that it was
the contact with this fabric that assisted the worshipper to cause the image
26. On this topic see James Bugslag, Local Pilgrimages and their Shrines in Pre-Modern Europe,
Peregrinations (2007), pp. 1-26 (pp. 7-9, 14), at http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu
27. Argaiz, La Perla de Catalua, pp. 14-15. A great many of these legends seek to justify the
special presence of Mary or Jesus in specific, sometimes very small communities. What is
striking among shrine legends is that, although they are tailored to specific localities and
circumstances, the same topoi and patterns recur frequently in many of them. The pattern
chosen by Gregorio de Argaiz for the Montserrat image was indeed the most common. See
Bugslag, Local Pilgrimages and their Shrines, pp. 6-7.
28. Argaiz, La Perla de Catalua, pp. 24-25.
29. Laplana, La imatge de la Mare de Du, p. 23.
30. For the sources of the Cantigas on the Virgin of Montserrat, see Cebri Baraut, Les Cantigues
dAlfons el Savi i El primitiu Liber miraculorum de Nostra Dona de Montserrat, Estudis
Romnics, 2 (1949-50), pp. 79-92; see also Keller, Montserrat in the Cantigas, pp. 205-6.
31. Josep Gudiol, De peregrins i peregrinatges religiosos catalans, Analecta sacra tarraconensia:
Revista de cincies historico-eclesistiques, 3 (1927), pp. 93-119 (pp. 101-119); Baraut,
Les Cantigues, p. 81.
to work great miracles.29 To resume, ever since the mid-seventeenth century

the Montserrat image was Jerusalemite and an authentic portrait of the
living Virgin, therefore it performed special miracles that further verified
and enhanced its sanctity.
The fame of the Montserrat Virgin had spread since the early thirteenth
century throughout Catalonia and the neighbouring reigns in prose, poetry
and songs that celebrated the images works of healing and grace. The
Cantigas de Santa Maria of King Alfonso X (1252-84), which is the richest
collection of miracles worked by images of Virgin in the Spanish Lands,
includes six miracles by the Virgin of Montserrat.30 The sanctuary became
a popular destination of worshippers who arrived in processions from the
nearby lands and also attracted pilgrims from southern France, the
Mediterranean islands, and even Italy, as well as pilgrims on their way to
Santiago de Compostela, Roma, and Jerusalem.31 The abbey profited from
the increased fame and traffic, and by the mid-fifteenth century it already
was the major shrine in Catalonia. 32 Montserrat was a well-organized
devotional centre and several Montserrat monks wrote and collected stories,
poetry, and songs in praise of the Moreneta that not only honoured but also
publicized it; moreover, in the late fifteenth century, when the monastery
established one of the first printing presses in the area, its abbots and high
ranking monks effectively made use of the new technologies to publish
hundreds of books, indulgences for the brotherhoods, and also many stamps
with the image of the Virgin that were sold to the ever-growing number of
romeros and pilgrims.33
MONS IN QUO BENEPLACITUM EST D EO HABITARE IN EO (PS 67 (68), 17)

The concept of miraculously found images of the Virgin that choose a
certain site to stay there, in order to care for believers who venerate her, is
not self-evident. The divine choice of a site for a revelation and performance
of miracles implies that there are favoured places to serve the divinity and
beg for misericordy and help. The map of such sites shows that many of
them are located in mountains, like the Montserrat Holy Cave and sanctuary.
The Christian concept that there are mountains of the Lord, which he
has chosen as his dwelling, has its roots in the Jewish Bible and was most
probably reinforced by the adoption and adaption of local pagan traditions. 34
32. Christian, Apparitions, p. 111.

33. Anselm Albareda, La imprenta de Montserrat (segles xv-xvi), Analecta Monserratina, 2
(1918), pp. 11-166; Fernndez Terricabras, Montserrat, montagne sacre, p. 195. Romeros
are the worshippers who come in cultic processions (romeras) to ask for the favours of the
Virgin or as an ex-voto for her assistance.
34 . This concept, specifically regarding the Montserrat Mountain, has been addressed by Ignasi
Fernndez Terricabras in his Montserrat, montagne sacre, and by Francesc Roma i Casanovas
in his La construcci medial de la muntanya. We elaborate on some of the ideas presented
in their works.
356 L ILY A RAD
I dwell in a high and holy place, says God to his people through the
prophet Isaiah (57, 15). This idea is also implied in the lyric Psalm 121,
which opens with an emotive plea: I look to the mountains / where will
my help come from? In another example, Psalm 20, 2, the wish is
expressed that May he [the Lord] send you help from his Temple and give
you aid from Mount Zion, whereas Psalm 132, 13-14, explains: For the
Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation: This is my
resting place forever; here I will reside, for I have desired it. As an echo,
the Apostle John tells in the Book of Revelation, 14, 1: Then I looked, and
there was the Lamb standing on Mount Zion.
Following the Scriptures, at the opening of his Libro de la historia y
milagros hechos a invocacin de Nuestra Seora de Montserrat, published in
1536, Abbot Pere de Burgos invites the reader calling: Venite, ascendamus
ad montem Domini, ad domum dei Jacob, and likewise referring to the
divinely chosen biblical mountain the Montserrat monk Matthieu Olivier
describes, in his 1617 Histoire de labbaye et des miracles de Notre-Dame de
Montserrat, the Catalan sacred mountain as mons in quo beneplacitum est
Deo habitare in eo A mountain in which God is well pleased to dwell,
that is to say, as the mountain of God in Psalm 67 (68), 17.35
The paradoxical question of an omnipotent and universal Creator who is
immanent in his creation and present everywhere at all times, but at the
same time also tends to reveal himself in certain circumstances and sites,
became especially controversial in the sixteenth century when the Protestant
Reformation, as well as Catholic followers of Erasmus (1466?-1536),
condemned many of the ideas on which pilgrimage depended, such as the
thaumaturgical specialization of saints which they associated to pagan
practices, and denied the notion that Gods grace was more common at
certain places (the basis to the foundation of shrines and pilgrimage).36 This
question was also asked in relation to the Montserrat Mountain, but only to
reassert the Counter-Reformations position. Thus, in 1536 the first historian
of Montserrat, Abbot Pere de Burgos, wrote in the prologue to his Libro de la
historia y milagros hechos a invocacin de Nuestra Seora de Montserrat:
God our Lord [has wished] to choose certain sites where shrines were
built and dedicated to his holy mother, and to which the faithful come to
beg and commend themselves to her [...] safekeeping.37
35. Matthieu Olivier, Histoire de labbaye et des miracles de Notre Dame de Montserrat (Lyon:
Guillaume Rouille, 1617), p. 7. See also Ex 3, 12: God replied, I will be with you, and when
you bring the people out of Egypt, you will worship me on this mountain. In addition, see the
so called Song of Moses in Ex 15, 17: You bring them in and plant them on your mountain,
the place that you, Lord, have chosen for your home, the Temple that you yourself have
built. Quoted by Roma i Casanovas, La construcci medial de la muntanya, p. 65.
36. William A. Christian, Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, 1981), pp.
161-62.
37. Ha querido [...] Dios nuestro Seor escojer algunos lugares adonde se ayan edificados tem-
plos a titulo de su bendita madre, a los quales acudan los fieles a suplicar y a ampararse del
Significantly, as noted above, Pere de Burgos specified that God himself

expressed his predilection for Montserrat: God put the sanctuary and the
mountain together and consecrated them as one inseparable whole that
mediated miracles.
The special status of Montserrat as a mountain chosen and sacralized
by God was restated again and again, a fact that shows that this was a
central topic in the theological and the local political discourse and as
such, required to be reaffirmed and strengthened. For example, eighty one
years after Abbot Pere de Burgos, in 1617, the Montserrat monk Matthieu
Olivier wrote that God chose this mountain as a palace and treasury of this
precious relic [the image of the Virgin] and to be venerated as his house
and the Gate of Heaven, and added that it seems that this site was expressly
created for the cult of God.38 Towards the end of the century, in the preface
to his Histoire de Notre-Dame du Mont-Serrat avec la description de lAbbaye
et des hermitages, published in Paris in 1697 and reprinted many times, the
Montserrat monk Louis Montegut remarked:
Although the faith teaches us that God is everywhere, that he knows
our most secret thoughts, and that therefore the true worshippers may
ask for his favour in any place, there are some places that seem to have
been privileged and it seems that His Majesty may be more accessible
and his generosity more liberal. Who can know, says Augustine, why
God finds pleasure in performing more miracles in certain sites rather
than in others?39
Most significantly in our context, Louis Montegut argued that Montserrat
was sanctified by the presence of the Virgin [ ] and similarly the holy places
of Jerusalem were sanctified by the presence of Jesus Christ [our emphasis].40
Indeed, the foundation myth of the Montserrat sanctuary was also based
on the wish of the Virgin, who through her sculpted image as Mare de Du
chose the mountain as her shrine. We already noted that miraculous
inventions of images of the Virgin venerated as mediatrix and coredemtrix
were no exception in Spain at the time.41 Nevertheless, the Montserrat
favor de su bendita madre, adonde han llegado con ansia y devocion, alcancen remedio para
su tribulacion. See Pere de Burgos, Libro de la historia y milagros, I: Historia, Prolog, Fol. A 4.
38. Olivier, Histoire de labbaye, p. 194.
39. Quoique la foi nous enseigne que Dieu est par tout, quiil connot nos plus secretes penses,
et quainsi les veritables adorateurs peuvent en tout lieu demander des grces, il y a pourtant
des lieux qui sont comme priviligiez et o il semble que Sa Majest soit plus accessible et sa
bont plus liberale. Qui peut, dit Saint Augustin, savoir pourquoi Dieu se plat faire
plusieurs miracles en certains lieux pltt quen dautres?. We consulted the edition published
in 1739 in Toulouse, by N. Caranove Fils; for this quotation, see the fifth page of its unpaged
preface. See also Fernndez Terricabras, Montserrat, montagne sacre, p. 202.
40. tels ont aussi t les lieux sacrez de Jrusalem sanctifiez par la presence de Jesus-Christ.
Montegut, Histoire de Notre-Dame, sixth and seventh pages of unpaged preface.
41. The zone of devotion can be mapped from lists of miracle books and other publications. Montserrat
and Guadalupe were the two poles of Iberian devotion. Other founded virgins in Catalonia were
venerated in Nuria, in the Pyrenees, attracting devotees from the present-day provinces of Girona
358 L ILY A RAD
marededu was not just any miraculously found image of the Virgin: as
well remembered, it was one of the invaluable images crafted in Jerusalem
by St. Luke and one of the few that were brought to the Iberian Peninsula
by the Apostle St. Peter. No doubt, it was the exceptional origin of the
image, rather than the miracle of its invention, which endowed it with the
unique sacredness and heavenly powers that also sacralized the site that
had been prodigiously chosen for its shrine. 42
A TRANSLATED AXIS MUNDI

The conflation of different myths and of particularities of sacred sites
was a well-known phenomenon. Already in the Bible there was a tendency
to translate and conflate sacred places into a few privileged sites, whose
symbolism consequently was greatly enriched and became centres of cult
to God. Thus, the call in Isaiah 2, 2 (and Micah 4,2), Venite, ascendamus
ad montem Domini, ad domum dei Jacob, quoted by Abbot Pere de Burgos
at the head of his 1536 book on the history of Montserrat, had been
interpreted both in Jewish and Christian exegesis as identifying the site
of Jacobs dream (Gen 28, 11-19) and the Temple Mount as one and the
same site.43 The identification was made possible by the biblical text itself,
which does not indicate the exact location where the event took place,
informing only that Jacob called the site Bethel, which in Hebrew means
House of the Lord.44
Moreover, we should also note that Isaiahs and Micahs calls are not
the only instances of an association between Montserrat and the House of
and Barcelona and what is now French Cerdegna as far north as Perpignan; at the Font de la
Salut near Traiguera (Castell de la Plana), a statue of the Virgin Mary was supposedly found
by miracle in a spring in 1438, and shortly after then it acquired papal and royal privileges
that turned the site into a thriving centre for cures. See Christian, Apparitions, p. 111-12.
42. For these legends, see Jos Muoz Maldonado, Conde de Fabrequer, Historia, tradiciones y
leyendas de las imgenes de la Virgen aparecidas en Espaa, 1 (Madrid: Impr. y Litografa de
D. Juan Jos Martnez, 1861). eBook, digitalized on 18 June 2009 from original at the Library
of Catalonia. On the Montserrat image, see pp. 69-72 and on the conflation of the Virgins
and the Gari legends, pp. 72-76. For additional examples of the Evangelist St. Lukes images
of the Virgin in Spain, see pp. 37-40 for the Madrid Virgin, pp. 57, 61-62 for the Almudena
Virgins mantle painted by St. Luke, and pp. 132-33, 144-45 for the Virgin of Fuencisla,
patroness of Segovia. For the essential qualities and powers of the images of the Virgin made
by St. Luke, see Alarcn Romn, Clasificacin y fuentes, pp. 21-22.
43. Sylvia Schein, Between Mount Moriah and the Holy Sepulchre: The Changing Traditions of
the Temple Mount in the Central Middle Ages, Traditio, 40 (1984), pp. 175-195 (p. 184).
See also Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, 31 (the Sacrifice of Isaac) and 35 (Jacobs Dream); this
eschatological Midrash composition was written in Palestine in the eighth century, that is to
say under Islamic rule.
44. Commentaries on Genesis 28 in the Glossa Ordinaria and other medieval works identify
Bethel with the future site of the Temple, the cultic centre of ancient Israel and focal point
for the activity of Jesus. See, among others, David C. Steinmetz, Luther and the Ascent of
Jacobs Ladder, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, 55 (1986), pp. 179-92
(esp. pp. 179, 183-84). DOI: 10.2307/3167419.
God on the Temple Mount made by learned abbots, monks, and pilgrims.
For example, the monk Matthieu Olivier connected his abbey with the divine
revelation at Bethel by asserting in his Histoire de labbaye et des miracles
de Notre-Dame de Mont-Serrat (which as noted above was first published in
1617), that all pilgrims come to Montserrat as the House of God and the
Gate of Heaven; 45 this is a literal quotation of Jacobs exclamation when
he awoke in great awe of God, according to the biblical story of the
patriarchs dream (Gen 28, 17). Therefore, our two examples, Abbot Pere
de Burgoss decision to open his book on Montserrat with the verse Venite,
ascendamus ad montem Domini, ad domum dei Jacob, and the monk
Matthieu Oliviers description of the abbey as the House of God and the
Gate of Heaven, should be considered as no mere poetical expressions.
The conflation of the two sites, Bethel and the Temple Mount, was well-
known and, what is more, was reinforced and spread in Jerusalem itself
among the pilgrims who reached their longed for destination. For example,
the Anglo-Saxon pilgrim Seawulf, who visited Jerusalem in 1102-1103,
associated with the Templum Domini (the Muslim Dome of the Rock that
the Crusaders christianized as the Temple of the Lord) a large number of
biblical traditions and located in the Temple Mount the ancient Bethel,
where Jacob rested and saw in his dream the ladder bridging between
earth and heaven; 46 almost certainly, Seawulf was informed by local
Christians, since as a layman he probably did not have enough knowledge
to invent such traditions. Our second example evidences the long life of
this same tradition, on the one hand, and its malleability in Christian thought
on the other hand: about four centuries after Seawulf, the Franciscan friar
Francesco Suriano, Custos Terrae Sanctae from 1493 to 1495 and from 1512
to 1515, located the place where Jacob saw the ladder, where the angel
wrestled with him, and where he exclaimed This place is holy [...] It must
be the House of God; it must be the gate that opens into heaven not in the
Templum Domini on the Temple Mount, but on Mount Calvary.47 The
translation of traditions was called for: Jerusalem had been lost to the
Muslims more than two and a half centuries before Francesco Suriano
served in Jerusalem, and since then the Templum Domini had returned to
its original dedication as the Dome of the Rock; not the least of all, it was
inaccessible to non-Muslims.
Pilgrims who reached the Holy Sepulchre were welcome and shown to
its many sacred sites by the monks serving that sanctuary, according to a
more or less regular order and interpretative scheme, as evidenced by
45. Olivier, Histoire de labbaye, p. 194.

46. Schein, Between Mount Moriah, p. 184.
47. Idem, p. 194. Fra Suriano was the author of the popular Il trattato di Terra Santa e dell
Oriente, that was published in 1485 according to some sources, or as late as 1515 according to
others.
360 L ILY A RAD
repetitive accounts of pilgrimages.48 The wonders they saw included the

site where Jacob saw the ladder, and the site and the narratives may have
been especially significant to those pilgrims who came from sacred mounts
like Montserrat, that were considered a New Jerusalem and an axis mundi
bridging like Jacobs ladder between earth and heaven. Naturally, the
association of their homeland as New Jerusalem with the Holy Sepulchre,
where the ombilicus mundi was located, would be strengthened by these
narratives, and when back at home they would emotively elaborate their
accounts on the marvellous things they saw and experienced. Moreover,
worshippers who reached the sanctuary of Montserrat would probably hear
the local monks constructed and reconstructed descriptions of their
mountain as a sacred place, the Ladder to and the Gate of Heaven like the
Golgotha in Jerusalem. Most probably they would also create a symbolical
association with the Virgin and the image that they came to venerate, since
these were two of her metaphorical epithets. We should keep in mind that
central biblical stories and local traditions were known not only to the
lettered, but also to the unlettered through repetitive sermons at the church
and, moreover, what we call sensus allegoricus was actually recognized by
believers as the whole and only truth in the sensus literalis; sacred
geography was the only real space, for it is concerned with the only indu-
bitable reality the sacred. 49
The Montserrat Mountain and sanctuary perfectly corresponded to all

descriptions of an axis mundi. The mountain is situated in the centre of
Catalonia and its brisk rise, to a height of 1236 meters at the centre of a
plain, enhances both the perception of a central location and the steepness
of the cliffs, which seem to climb and reach the heavens. Therefore,
Montserrats location is that of the sacred mountain that rises at the centre
of the world and as such it functions as a ladder and gate of heaven. In his
paper The Yearning for Paradise in Primitive Tradition, Mircea Eliade
notes that we encounter the Paradise myth in cultures all over the world,
and that these myths may be classified into two great categories: first,
those concerning the primordial close proximity between Heaven and
Earth; and second, those referring to an actual means of communication
4 8 . Nieves Baranda, El camino espiritual a Jerusaln a principios del Renacimiento, in

Medieval and Renaissance Spain and Por tugal, ed. by Arthur Lee-Francis Askins,
Martha Elizabeth Schaffer, and Antonio Cortijo Ocaa (Tamesis Books, 2006), pp. 23-
41 (p. 30).
49. Dorothea R. French, Journeys to the Center of the Earth: Medieval and Renaissance
Pilgrimages to Mount Calvary, in Journeys Towards God: Pilgrimage and Crusade, ed. by
Barbara N. Sargent-Bauer (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1992), p. 60, based on Mircea Eliade,
Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, trans. by Philip Mairet (New York:
Sheed & Ward, 1969), pp. 39-40.
between these poles. 50 We would say that Montserrat can be perceived as

an expression of these two basic elements. As the biblical mountains, first
and foremost Moriah/ the Temple Mount/ Zion, it is a mythical axis mundi
that occupies the centre of the Earth and connects Earth with Heaven.51
But there is more to Montserrat as a translation of Jerusalem in the
sense of a mythical centre. The sanctuary that houses the sacred image of
the Virgin is located not on one of the peaks but at an altitude of 720 meters,
that is to say about midway up the mountain. Since the beginnings of the
seventeenth century at the latest, this midway point was believed to have
been chosen hundreds of years before by the Virgin herself, when her
image would not allow the carriers to move it from there. This element
strengthens even more the image of Montserrat as a reflection of the biblical
Holy City: Look at Jerusalem. I put her at the centre of the world, with
other countries all round her, says God (Ez 5, 5). The biblical concept of
Jerusalem is further elaborated in the Jewish tradition as in Midrash
Tanhuma (Kedoshim 10), which holds that the Land of Israel is situated in
the centre of the world, Jerusalem is situated in the centre of Israel, the
Temple in the centre of Jerusalem, and the Holy of Holies in the centre of
the Temple.52 This and similar traditions were possibly known in learned
Catholic circles like the Montserrat Abbey. For example, Gregorio de Argaiz
wrote in his La Perla de Catalua, that the massif, a sacred and miraculous
area, surrounds the monastery, which in turn surrounds the sanctuary
that surrounds the miraculous image of Our Lady.53 In this sense, similarly
to the mountains around Jerusalem, also the Montserrat Mountain sheltered
the sanctuary, which was located at the site chosen by the Virgin and
perceived as the House of God in Jerusalem: the sanctuary is the centre of
a centre with the Virgin as the Holy of Holies that houses the Son of God.
We may draw another allegorical parallel regarding both the location of
Jerusalem and Montserrat as sacred mountains and the two sanctuaries as
the dwelling place of God: As the mountains surround Jerusalem/ so the
Lord surrounds his people/ now and for ever, says Psalm 125, 2, meaning
that Jerusalem is an allegorical image of the care of God for his people
50. Mircea Eliade, The Yearning for Paradise in Primitive Tradition, Daedalus, 88: 2, Myth
and Mythmaking (Spring, 1959), pp. 255-267 (p. 255). E-version by the MIT Press on
behalf of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
51. Eliade remarks that the concept of an axis mundi developed in pastoral and sedentary cultures
and was handed to the great urban cultures of the ancient East. This would be the origin of the
biblical perception of Jerusalem. See idem, p. 256. See also French, Journeys to the Center of
the Earth, pp. 45-81, and below.
52. Sylvia Schein, Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West
(1099-1187), Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West (AldershotBurlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2005), p. 141.
53. Preface to the book.
362 L ILY A RAD
now and for all future time. Similarly, the tower-like steep cliffs surround
the Virgins sanctuary in Montserrat, which is located midway up the sacred
mountain, and her image protects the faithful and intercedes with God on
their behalf.
Lastly, we should recall that in this sense the Virgin is identified not
only with the Temple but also with the Mountain of the Lord. She is like
a mountain because she was chosen for the ultimate calling of bearing
God in her womb. This interpretation is based on Psalm 67 [68], 17, which
is read as a metaphor for Mary meaning that God dwells inside a mountain
in the same way that Jesus dwelt inside the Virgins womb. Most significant
in our context, as already noted, Matthieu Olivier identified Montserrat
with the Mountain of the Lord in that same Psalm Gods mountain, a
rich mountain, the mountain in which God has been pleased to dwell.
TRASLADADA EN ESSA S ION, NUEVA J ERUSALEN, MONTAA DE MONSERRATE,

MONTE DE D IOS: MONS DEI
As we have seen, Montserrat, like Jerusalem, is an axis mundi: both are
perceived as cosmic mountains, the centre of a centre, and a bridge between
earth and heaven. In addition, many writers compare the Montserrat cliffs
and peaks to the towered walls enclosing a city built on a high mountain.
Thus Abbot Pere de Burgos, the first historian of Montserrat, praised the
beauty of the mountain and noted that in many places the steep cliffs reach
such height that they recall the towers of a city set high up, and in the
north face of the mountain the rocks are so rough that they look like the
strong walls of a big city. 54
Nevertheless, Montserrat is not like any metaphorically walled city. In
the sermon for the feast of the Virgin as patron of Montserrat on 8 September
1672, the preacher Francisco de los Ros praised the mountain Trasladada
en essa Sion, nueva Jerusalen, montaa de Monserrate, monte de Dios: Mons
Dei translated to that Zion, the New Jerusalem, mountain of Montserrat,
mount of God: Mons Dei. 55 About twenty years later, in c. 1690, the
Montserrat monk Francisco de Ortega clearly pointed to the similarity between
Montserrat and the New Jerusalem in his Poema heroico, when he described
the mountain as the City of God of this hemisphere,56 in an image that
suggests the Heavenly Jerusalem in the Revelation to St. John, 21-22.
54. Por muchas partes se levantan unas rocas tan altas, que no parecen sino torres de alguna
ciudad puesta en alto, y a la parte de la tramontana estn de tal manera tajadas las peas que
parecen ser una muy fuerte cerca de alguna grande ciudad. Libro de la historia, p. 1. See Roma
i Casanovas, La construcci medial de la muntanya, pp. 334-339, with many examples of
comparisons of Montserrat to a walled city.
55. Alts i Aguil, La santa imatge de Montserrat, pp. 140-142.
56. Es la Ciudad de Dios deste Hemisferio. Poema heroico[:] Historia del origen, antiguedad,
e invencion de nuestra senora [sic] de Monserrate, y descripcion de su sagrada montana
The image of biblical Jerusalem surrounded all around by a crenellated

wall could easily be applied as a metaphor to Montserrat, especially since
many other biblical images had been used to draw a parallel between the
Catalonian mountain and the Holy City. The valuable metaphor also was
readily adopted by other religious institutions and towns in mountainous
Catalonia. Indeed, as Roma i Casanovas remarks, the Mountain of Nuria,
which towers upon a valley and the church dedicated there to the Virgin,
was repeatedly compared to Jerusalem in this sense, and at the same time
that Montserrat was reconstructing its legends and sacralizing them with
close associations with Jerusalem. It seems that this is a representation of
the Holy City of Jerusalem, of which [King] David said that was surrounded
by mountains, wrote Francesc Mars in his Historia y miracles de la sagra-
da imatge de nostra Senyora de Nria, first published in 1666.57 To complete
the picture of his homeland, Francesc Mars also described the Mountain
of Nuria as a real paradise on earth. 58 This last parallel, but between
Paradise and Montserrat, had already been drawn in 1587 by the poet
Cristoval de Virus in his El Monserrate.59 The verses in Isaiah 51, 3,
comparing Jerusalem to Paradise, lyrically explain the double
association:
I will show compassion to Jerusalem,
to all who live in her ruins.
Though her land is a desert, I will make it a garden,
like the garden I planted in Eden.
Joy and gladness will be there,
and songs of praise and thanks to me.
In view of the laudatory character of the literature on sanctuaries and
the holy as a whole, and the tendency to elaborate on metaphors, the parallels
[sic], y heremitorio, (Amberes (?), 1690 (?)), p. 98. Kept at the Biblioteca Nacional de
Madrid, signature R 5380. Quoted by Roma i Casanovas, La construcci medial de la muntanya,
pp. 337-38.
57. apar, que sia una representaci de la santa Ciutat de Hyerusalem, de la qual diu David, que
estava circuda de Montanyas. We quote the 1700 edition published in Barcelona by the
editorial Estampa de Antoni Lacavalleria, page 4.
58. Francesc Mars complete argument reads: La amenitat, gentilesa, y hermosura de aquellas
Montaas de Nuria apenas pot declararse ab la ploma; perque no pot dirse ab ella lo que
apenas podrn distinguir, ni especificar ab la vista los qui las veuhen; sols com ha admirats
de las perfectas obras de naturalesa, dihuen, que se es esmerada ella per glorias de Maria
Santissima en esmaltar la terra ab florestas de tan varios, y diferents colors, de tanta suavitat,
y gentilesa, que forman un viu retrato del Parads Terrenal [our emphasis]. Mars, Historia
y miracles, p. 12, quoted and interpreted by Roma i Casanovas, La construcci medial de la
muntanya, pp. 313, 344.
59. El Monserrate del Capitn Cristoval de Virus. The first edition of El Monserrate, which was
published in Madrid, was reedited in Milan in 1602 and enlarged in 1609. See, for example,
Canto V, Canto XII y Canto XX. http://www.archive.org/details/elmonserratedel00virugoog.
See also Roma i Casanovas, La construcci medial de la muntanya, p. 341.
364 L ILY A RAD
between Catalonian sacred mountains and Jerusalem, or between them

and Paradise may have been clear and significative to the faithful. Therefore,
metaphors such as those created by the poet Cristoval de Virus when
calling Montserrat a Paradise, and by Francisco de los Ros when calling it
a New Jerusalem, could most probably be repeated and spread also by the
monks who tended to the romeros and pilgrims that arrived to the sacred
mountain.
THE EARTH SHOOK, THE ROCKS SPLIT APART (MT 27, 51): MONTSERRAT
GRIEVES
The verticality of the outlines of the Montserrat Mountain naturally
arouses the imagination of those who see this conglomerate of cliffs. The
exceptional shapes have been compared to a walled city, gigantic fingers,
the tubes of an organ, and as the etymology of the massifs name conveys
a serrated mountain. As we noted, the sudden rise of the cliffs emphasizes
the impression that the peaks are reaching for the heavens, a symbolism
related to mythical cosmic perceptions that inspired many legends in the
attempt to explain the origins of singular mountains.
Two legends on the origin of the fantastic shape stand out. One legend
tells that the Child Jesus serrated the mountain to help the faithful climb
up the cliffs and reach the sanctuary and the hermitages. The image of the
Child sitting on his Mothers lap and sawing the peaks is paradigmatic of
medals, illustrations in books, and stamps in the fifteenth and sixteenth
century.60 The other legend explains the mountains configuration as a
result of its emotive reaction to the death of Jesus on the cross: Montserrat
split apart like the Golgotha Hill and a few selected sacred mountains.
This legend prevails in written sources. As noted above, the symbolical
association of Montserrat with the Golgotha appeared much earlier, as
evidenced by the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfons X which were compiled
between the 1270s and 1284. The Cantiga number 113 tells How Holy
Mary of Montserrat protected the monastery so that the stone which fell
from the cliff would not strike it, because I [Alfons the Wise] think it right
and proper that stones obey the Mother of the King, because when He died
for us, I know that they split asunder [our emphasis].61 The illustration of
the miracle in the Manuscrito rico (Fig. 2), the most lavishly illuminated
of the Cantigas de Santa Maria manuscripts (Escorial, MS T.I.1 (EI)), is
identified by a caption quoting Alfonss words in the title of that story:Por
razon tenno dobedecer as pedras Madre do Rei, que quando morreu por nos
sei que porend se foron fender. This is the earliest known reference to the
60. Alarcn, Las ilustraciones marianas, p. 174. A less popular version of this legend says that
angels sawed the mountain; it is noted by Gaspar Barreiros (1546) and Barthlemy Joly
(1603). See Fernndez Terricabras, La Vierge et les montagnes, p. 195.
61. Keller, Montserrat in the Cantigas, pp. 211-14.
mountains grief at the moment of the death of Jesus as the reason for its
unique cliffy shape. Regarding the interpretation of the image in the Ma-
nuscrito rico, we should note that whereas the personal style of a painter
was not a parameter in the iconographic reading, a certain shape and
colour were perceived as iconographic signifiers. Therefore, the description
of the Golgotha and the Montserrat Mountain by means of the same pictorial
elements, more so in the same illustration, played an iconographical role
and reinforced the identity between the two mountains that was also
conveyed by the captions and the story as a whole.
However, the exegesis that the Montserrat Mountains cracked outlines
are the result of its deep grief at the moment of the death of Jesus on the
cross became widely accepted as a historical truth only by 1677, the year
when Gregorio de Argaiz published his La Perla de Catalua. When Matthew
said that the earth shook, the rocks split apart [27, 51], asks Argaiz,
could it be that he referred only to those stones located nearby the Golgotha
Mount? As our Father St. Gregory explains, continues Argaiz, at that moment
the walls of the buildings fell down, or cracked, or split apart, and the
same happened to the strongest and most resisting rocks. The author then
quotes the learned arguments of Hauberto [Hispalense] and Liberato
[Gerundense] each in his own Chronicon,62 and points to the Promontory
of Gaeta in the Campania; Alverna in Toscana (there St. Francis received
the stigmata); Mount Raynerio in Italy, and the Pea de San Miguel de Faix
which similarly split apart. Nevertheless, he clarifies, it was Montserrat
that grieved the most and its great sadness was especially appreciated by
God. Therefore, although this mountain which was created as a perfect
massif of the hardest rock, with no traces of valleys, divisions or trees
split and lost its original shape at the moment of the death of Jesus, it
did not become deteriorated; on the contrary, its form was improved
and it seemed that it had died ugly to resuscitate beautiful, as if the
Eternal Father had wished to cover its nakedness with rich garments in
appreciation of the great suffering it experienced at the death of his Son
[our emphasis].
62. Argaiz, La Perla de Catalua, pp. 2-3. Not only Hauberto Hispalenses Chronicon was a
seventeenth-century fake. Also Liberato Gerundenses was. The latter was written by Juan
Gaspar Roig i Jalp, and the false Chronicon was dated to 546. We should note that although
doubts regarding the authenticity of these and other works arose soon after they were published,
Argaiz considered them trustworthy and included them in his Poblacion eclesiastica de
Espaa y noticia de sus primeras honras: continuada en los escritos, y Chronicon de Hauberto,
monge de San Benito (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1668), and Poblacion eclesiastica de Espaa
y noticia de sus primeras honras ...: continuada en los escritos de Marco Maximo Obispo de
Zaragoa y defendidos de la vulgar embidia el Beroso Aniano, Flavio Lucio Dextro, Auberto
Hispalense, y Vualabonso: con el cronicon de Liberato Abad, no impresso antes ... (Madrid:
Gabriel de Len, 1669). See digitalized editions by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid,
2010 and 2009 respectively.
366 L ILY A RAD
Thus, elaborates Argaiz, if in its first condition the Montserrat Mountain
had looked so rough that it was considered difficult even for ferocious
animals to inhabit it, now its rocks are made of jasper and with almost no
effort the semi-precious stones can be perceived.63 Possibly, this story of
rough rocks turning into semi-precious stones could recall another well-
known biblical verse that was often quoted in sermons and the liturgy:
Ezekiel, in the prophecy on the Judgment of the Nations (28, 13-14),
expressing Gods teachings: You lived in Eden, the garden of God [...] You
lived on my holy mountain and walked among sparkling gems; such
association would equal the structure that Montserrat acquired after the
crucifixion with that of Paradise.
The influential Compendio historial, o relacin breve y veridical del por-
tentoso santuario y cmara angelical de Nuestra Seora de Montserrate, diri-
gido a los piadosos devotos afectos de aquella Persona, que desean verle, y no
se les proporciona la fortuna de conseguirlo, which was published in Barce-
lona in the year 1758 by an anonymous author who has been identified as
the Abbot of Montserrat Benet Argeric,64 adds two emotive dimensions to
the interpretation of the shape of Montserrat. Benet Argeric follows Gregorio
de Argaizs explanation based on the symbolical association to the Golgotha
in Jerusalem, in a highly emotional and personal call to greater devotion.
The Abbot affirms that like the Golgotha, this mountain split asunder at the
death of Jesus and moreover, in a local patriotic tone, he adds that Montserrat
differs from all the mountains that have tried to imitate it in that:
Whereas the other mounts cause horror and frighten those who look at
them, this [mountain] instils solace and a special joy to those who arrive
to see it even if from afar and discover it with their eyes; it seems as if the
Creator wished to honour and singularize these crags and rocks because
of the tenderness that they so manifestly expressed at the moment of the
death of our Redeemer, when their natural inert bowels broke, and their
sacred peaks trembled as if they grieved the cruel death of their Author.65
63. We transcribe here part of the authors long explanation, which appears in his La Perla de
Catalua, p. 3: Qued el cuerpo deste monte peregrino, y estrao por estremo, diferente del
rostro qantes tenia; pero no deteriorado, sino mejorado mucho, y fue como morir feo, para
resucitar hermoso; q parece quiso el Padre Eterno vestir sus desnudezes en premio al senti-
miento que mostr en la muerte de su Hijo, con sobrepuestas galas q no tuvo, ni le dieron en
su primera condicion; porque si antes a los q le miravan se mostrava tan aspero, que aun
habitarlo los animales fieros se juzgava por dificultoso [...] assi aora examinada la calidad de
las peas se halla q son jaspes, y q con poco cuidado se topa con lo fino.
64. Barcelona: Juan Jolis.
65. quando los dems montes causan horror, y espanto quien los mira, ste infunde un
particular consuelo, y una especial alegria quien llega aunque de muy lejos a descubrirle
con la vista [...] parece que quiso el Criador de todo honrar, y singularizar estos riscos, y
peascos, por la ternura que tan patentemente manifestaron en la muerte de nuestro
Redemptor, rompiendose sus naturales insensibles entraas, y estremenciendose sus pro-
montorios sacros, como que se dolian de la cruel muerte de su Autor. See p. 2.
Pain turns into joy because of the sacredness of the event that took pla-
ce in Montserrat as in Jerusalem.
The religious interpretation of the special shape of Montserrat that

associates it with the Golgotha rapidly spread as true and trustworthy,
although other etymologies of the mountains name continued to appear
at its side. Moreover, additional sources were invented to prove the
truth of the Montserrat - Golgotha equation. We will refer to a construct
that was frequently quoted as historical evidence, as in the Epistome
histrico del portentoso santuario y Real Monasterio de Nuestra Seora de
Montserrate, written by the historian Pere Serra y Postius and partly
published in 1742. 66 Serra y Postius presents a prestigious source whose
authority would be hard to challenge: St. Cyril, Father of the Church
and Bishop of Jerusalem (for various periods between c. 350 and 386),
in his Catechesis 13:
Id quod hactenus Golgotha monstrat, ubi propter Christum petrae scissae
sunt, nec non ex traditione Mons Albernae in Etruria, in Campania
Promontorium ad littus Caieta, et in Tarraconensi Hispania
Montserratus [our emphasis].67
Serra y Pontius admits that he did not consult the works of St.
Cyril, and to mend this fault in a scholarly manner, he proceeds to
name a long list of major experts who verify the contents of that
Catechesis.68
Also interesting in this respect is the account by Cayetano Cornet y Mas
(Gaiet Cornet i Mas) in his Tres das en Montserrat. Gua historico-descrip-
tiva de todo lo que contiene y encierra esta montaa, first published in Bar-
celona in 1858.69 The work of Cornet y Mas introduces elements that mirror
a rapidly changing perception of reality against the background of the
technological, industrial and socio-political revolutions taking place in the
mid-nineteenth century. After a detailed description of the mountain in
scientific terms (actually seasoned with many metaphors), and an elaborate
geological analysis of the rocks, Cornet y Mas presents a long list of authors
who explain the configuration of the mountain as the result of its deep grief
at the moment of the death of Christ. At some point in his discussion also
Cornet y Mas quotes St. Cyrils Catechesis, haec. 13, in the very same words
that Serra y Postius used. Contrastingly, or perhaps apologetically in light
66. Barcelona: Joseph Giralt.

67. That which has hitherto been shown by the Golgotha, where the splits in the rocks still exist
as a sign of the love for Christ, according to tradition [can be seen] also in Mount Alverna in
Etruria, Campania, and in Cape Gaeta on the shore, and in the Tarraconensi Hispania
Montserratus. Serra y Postius, esp. pp. 55-56.
68. Idem, pp. 56-60.
69. We consulted the second edition, published in Barcelona by the Librera del Plus Ultra in 1863.
368 L ILY A RAD
of the many controversies between the Church and scientific circles at the
time, Cornet y Mas adds: This is what Argaiz said. 70
We notice in these examples two relevant phenomena in the context of
the development of the legend of Montserrat as a translation of Jerusalem.
One phenomenon is the importance given by these authors to the ancient
Jerusalemite source, Bishop St. Cyril of Jerusalem of all Fathers of the
Church, as most trustworthy. As well remembered, Argaiz mentioned later
personalities as his direct sources: St. Gregory, Hauberto Hispalense, and
Liberato Gerundense. Evidently, Cyril of Jerusalems words were perceived
as much more authoritative both because of his status as Bishop of
Jerusalem, the site of this central religious event, and because he was
closer in time. It would not have been too difficult to prove that no such
story appears in Cyrils Catechesis,71 but possibly only counted readers
would doubt a quote of an ancient and prestigious Jerusalemite source. A
parallel development we may note in the development of the legend of the
Montserrat image of the Virgin: at first the origins of the image were not
known, as Abbot Pere de Burgos stated, but at a certain point in time it was
clear that the image had been created in Jerusalem by St. Luke, who
personally knew the Virgin, as Argaiz wrote; historians of the monastery
also specified that it was brought to Spain by St. Peter and, last but not the
least, all these historical events were repeatedly confirmed by trustworthy
ecclesiastics.
The other relevant phenomenon, in the context of the development of
the legend of Montserrat as a translation of Jerusalem, is the role of the
legend equating Montserrat and the Golgotha in the religious, political,
and cultural discourse. For example, nine years after Cornet y Mas, who
chose not to give his own opinion regarding the origins of the mountains
shape, Miguel Muntadas i Roman, abbot of Montserrat in the years 1858-
1885, published his own history book, titled Montserrat: su pasado, su pre-
sente y su porvenir, , lo que fu hasta su destruccion el ao 1811, lo que es
desde su destruccion y lo que ser en adelante. Historia compuesta en vista de
los documentos existentes en el archivo del monasterio, por el abad el M. Iltre.
Sr. D. Miguel Muntadas.72 The last part of the long title called our attention:
70. Idem, pp. 20, 21. The history of Pere Serra y Postiuss book also reflects the political crisis
in Catalunya at the time. His refusal to include the portraits of Kings Felipe V and Luis I in a
gallery of portraits of the Counts of Barcelona, resulted in a court order forbidding to print
the second volumen; this was published in the 1747 edition of the book, which omitted all the
portraits. See Jos Luis Betrn, Antonio Espino and Llus Ferran Toledano, Pere Serra i
Postius y el criticismo historiogrfico en la Barcelona de la primera mitad del siglo XVIIIl,
Manuscrits, 10 (January 1992), pp. 315-29 (p. 319).
71. The source of this rewriting of Cyrils work may have been the special focus of this Catechesis
on the Crucifixion and burial of Jesus Christ.
72. Manresa: Imprenta de Pablo Roca, in charge of Luis Roca, 1867, eBook, digitalized 30
October 2009.
Historia compuesta en vista de los documentos existentes en el archivo del

monasterio History compiled from the documents kept at the monasterys
archive [our emphasis]. Contrarily to Cornet y Mas, both the wish to present
a scientific work and the apologetic approach are very clear; one example,
in our context, is the use of the equation Montserrat Golgotha, which is
called upon to invalidate secular points of view without rejecting the
importance of science. Abbot Muntadas dedicates, as usual, a first and
detailed chapter to the history and description of the mountain. He mentions
the many names given to Montserrat along its history and notes that the
original name, Mont-estorcil, quasi tortus, means a great pain and
was given to Montserrat at the time of the Redemptors work [our
emphasis].73 Next, like Cornet y Mas, Abbot Muntadas scholarly resumes
the scientific theories on the unique configuration of the mountain and
writes that there is no need to contradict the theories, or science, or history.
However, he remarks, in view of the many deficiencies of those theories,
would it be possible to doubt that the supernatural and awesome prodigies
at the Golgotha affected also this inexplicable Mountain, as proclaimed by
a pious and learned tradition, and as the heart with pleasure believes?74
Muntadas consequently ends his second chapter with a call: We must
confess it frankly and openly: Montserrat grieved the deicide, and its pain
caused the rocks to crack [our emphasis].75
Lastly, to reach the end of the century and a period of intensive
secularization, we will quote Francesc de Paula Crusellas, monk of
Montserrat, who published his book on the history of his monastery in
1896. As other writers before him, also Crusellas explained the exceptional
outlines of the Montserrat Mountain by equating it with the Golgotha in
Jerusalem at the time Jesus died on the cross. The author then praised the
great beauty of Montserrat, which distinguishes it from all mountains in
the world (by then a national, not only a religious topos) because it was a
gift of God. In other words, Crusellas brought forth the theme of Benet
Argerics Compendio, which as just noted was published in 1758, that is to
say at a very different socio-political, cultural, and religious period; therefore,
Crusellas evidences the strength and the malleability of the religious
morphological exegesis. The author wrote:
Whereas other mountains frighten, this mountain not only comforts and
causes spiritual joy, but also calls to contemplation of the celestial world.
It seems that with this glorious heraldic standard the Creator wished to
73. Idem, pp. 10-12.

74. Ser posible dudar que los sobrenaturales y aterradores prodigios del Glgota se sintieron en
esta inesplicable Montaa, como as lo proclama una tradicion tan piadosa, como ilustrada, y
como as se complace en creerlo el corazn?. Idem, p. 18.
75. Confesemoslo franca y abiertamente: Montserrat ha llorado el deicidio; y su dolor ha partido
sus rocas. Idem.
370 L ILY A RAD
honour and singularize these cliffs and peaks, in reward for the
tenderness that they manifested at the moment of thedeath of the Divine
Redemptor by splitting apart in grief over the death of their Author. In
Montserrat, the words of St. Matthew the Evangelist [27, 51] were
verified: Et terra mota est, et petrae scissae sunt.76
The literature on the history of Montserrat is extensive and rich in legends

and metaphors that enhance its sacredness and also explain its unique
landscape as connected with God in a special way and, therefore, worthy
of reverence. It is quite possible that the predominance of the legend that
equates Montserrat with the Golgotha in accounts of the history of the
devotional complex, poems, and songs that praise it, is related to the
development of pious practices such as the imitatio Christi, especially his
Passion. The roots of this cultual approach, known as devotio moderna,
reach back to the fourteenth century, and its pratice was much advanced
in Spain in the late fifteenth by the influential Garcias de Cisneros, abbot of
Montserrat in the years 1499-1510. 77 The devotio moderna called for an
emotive inner identification with the suffering of Jesus by methodical
meditation and prayer, and advanced the performance of a painstaking
mental via crucis that would bring the same spiritual benefits of a real
performance in Jerusalem.
Another source may have been the legends of St. Francis of Assisi. The
story of the stigmata of St. Francis, explaining that it precisely happened
on Mount Alverna because it cracked at the moment of the death of Jesus,
appeared in the Fioretti di San Francesco, a text probably written between
1370 and 1390 that by the year 1500 had reached many editions in Italian
and other languages;78 significantly, an anonymous text in vernacular
Spanish that may be a version of the Fioretti appeared in Spain in 1492.
According to Miguel ngel Vega Cernuda this date suggests that Garcias
de Cisneros may have been involved in its edition and diffusion.79 We should
76. Mientras las dems montaas suelen infundir pavor, sta no solo causa consuelo y espiritual
alegra, sino que convida la contemplacin de las cosas celestiales. Con este blasn glorioso
parece que quiso el Creador del mundo honrar y singularizar estos riscos y peascos por la
ternura que tan patentemente manifestaron en la muerte del Redentor Divino, rompindose
sus insensibles entraas como si se doliesen de la muerte de su Autor. En Montserrat, las
palabras de San Mateo el Evangelista (27, 51) fueron verificadas: Et terra mota est, et petrae
scissae sunt. Crusellas, Nueva historia del santuario, pp. 15-16.
77. Santiago Cantera Montenegro, Opus Dei y Devotio Moderna: El Directorio de las Horas
Cannicas de Garca Jimnez de Cisneros, O.S.B., Studies in Spirituality, 16 (2006), pp. 165-
80. DOI: 10.2143/SIS.16.0.2017797. See also below.
78. I Fioretti di San Francesco is not an original work but a compilation of anonymous works,
probably based on a translation to vernacular Italian of the Actus beati Francisce et sociorum
eius which is attributed to Ugolino da Montegiorgio c. 1320-1340.
79. Miguel ngel Vega Cernuda, Reflexiones crticas sobre la traduccin al espaol de las fuentes
franciscanas con especial referencia a Las Florecillas, in Los franciscanos hispanos por los
note another relevant parallel between Montserrat and Assisi: the indulgence
of the Porziuncula, granted by Boniface IX in 1397 to the pilgrims to
Montserrat after the model of Assisi (Portiunculae sacra aedes);80 no doubt,
this privilege further increased the prestige of the Catalan monastery. In
addition, relations between the two centres of devotion found expression
in the rituals performed in the Montserrat sanctuary and in the development
of legendary traditions.
In any case, we may suppose that the symbolism of the other popular
legend on the origins of the shape of the Montserrat mountain, telling that
the cliffs were serrated by the child Jesus to assist the faithful in reaching
the sanctuary, would have certainly been less impressive and meaningful
than that of a mountain that split apart at the sacrificial death of the adult
Son of God. The equation of Montserrat with the Golgotha would better
correspond to the philosophical and theological concepts of the late Middle
Ages, the devotio modernas ideal of an inner identification with Jesus, or
imitatio Christi, as in the performance of a mental via crucis or Marys
path of Sorrows. We shall elaborate on this topic below.
WITH THE VIRGIN IN HER J OYS AND SORROWS: THE WAY TO M ONTSERRAT
Three main ways led the pilgrims to Montserrat: the way of the coast
through Collbat, the way that passed below the Roca Foradada, and the
way from Monistrol. The three took advantage of natural passes, many of
them improved by quarrying the rocks. 81 The way from Collbat was the
most frequented: it was the preferred by pilgrims and visitors who travelled
through Barcelona and those who took part in the yearly cultic processions
to the sanctuary from villages and towns in the surrounding areas the
Low Llobregat, Peneds, and part of Anoia. This way also was the most
frequently described and represented.
The way from Collbat also was the choice of King Pere the Ceremonious
of the Crown of Aragon (1336-1387), who like his predecessors was a fervent
devotee of the Mare de Du de Montserrat and visited her five times
between the years 1339 and 1366. The King also was a protector of the
caminos de la traduccin: textos y contextos, ed. by Antonio Bueno Garca and Miguel ngel
Vega Cernuda (Edicin precongresual), (Soria: Diputacin Provincial de Soria, 2011), pp. 9-
35 (pp. 24, 26).
http://www.traduccion-franciscanos.uva.es/precong/pdf/Edicion%20precongresual.pdf
80. See Josep de C. Laplana, Montserrat, mil anys dart i histria (Manresa, Fundaci Caixa
Manresa: Angle, 1998), p. 53.
81. Assumpta Muset i Pons and Miquel Vives Tort, Els camins romeus de Montserrat (segle XI
1850), pp. 58-60, note 102, and Assumpta Muset i Pons with Joan Yeguas, Les creus del
cam de Collbat a Montserrat (segles XIV-XIX), n.p. Both studies were written in 2010 and
are to be published. I am most grateful to the authors for allowing me to consult their
research, and will bring here only their general conclusions; the arguments and sources will be
published by them.
372 L ILY A RAD
Benedictine community and its monastery, and it was his initiative to install
seven stone crosses on that way. The seven crosses were sculpted and
decorated in 1366 by Pere Moragues, a famous artist from Barcelona who
enjoyed the confidence of the King; two other artists carved the columns
that supported the crosses and painted them, and these were probably
installed in 1372. Assumpta Muset i Pons, Miquel Vives Tort, and Joan Ye-
guas, the three researchers who studied this topic in all its aspects in 2010,
agree with Xavier Alts i Aguils opinion that the scenes depicted on the
now lost stone crosses were the Seven Joys and Seven Sorrows of the
Virgin,82 and add that one cycle may have been represented on the obverse
of the crosses and the other on the reverse. 83 This is also the case in the
sanctuaries of Our Lady of Grace and of Montesin, both of them located in
Mallorca, where the seven-cross paths presented one cycle on the side of
the crosses facing the worshippers going up to the sanctuary and the other
cycle on the side facing those going down. According to Concepcin Alarcn
Romn, who studied the marian illustrations of the legend of Montserrat,
this possibility becomes more plausible since there is a certain
correspondence between the scenes depicted in Montesin of Mallorca
and the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat.84
At the beginnings of the sixteenth century, simple chapels were
constructed to enhance and protect the crosses. 85 Claude Bronseval,
secretary of the Abbot of Clairvaux Edme de Salieu and his close companion
on his journey through Spain and Portugal in 1532, described in his
chronicle the difficult path marked by seven crosses and the small but
aptly dressed stone chapels that sheltered them.86 Obviously, these new
constructions could also offer the pilgrims refuge and a private and peaceful
place to make a pause and meditate on the events described on the crosses.
Meditation exercised in front of each scene would help the faithful to reach
a mental and emotional state of identification with Jesus and his Mother.
82. Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (ms. 1): Edicin facsmil, p. 10. I thank Father Alts i Aguil for
kindly discussing this subject with me in the Montserrat Library in April 2011. Muset i Pons
and Vives Tort, El camins romeus, pp. 67-68, as well as Muset i Pons and Yeguas, Les creus
del cam, n.p., quote a document saying xiiij. istories en [les] .vij. pedres que de manament
del dit senyor [Pere III] deuen sser posades en certs lochs de les roques de Madona sancta
Maria.
83. Muset i Pons and Vives Tort, El camins romeus, p. 67, and Muset i Pons and Yeguas, Les
creus del cam, n.p., following Jos Garca Mercadal, Viajes de extranjeros por Espaa y
Portugal, 3 vols (Madrid: Aguilar, 1952-1962), vol. 1, p. 1032.
84. Alarcn Romn, Las ilustraciones marianas, p. 179.
85. Muset i Pons and Vives Tort, El camins romeus, pp. 68-69, note 135, based both on
archaeological findings, descriptions by visitors, and visual images.
86. Peregrinatio hispanica. Voyage de Dom Edme de Saulieu, abb de Clairvaux, en Espagne et
au Portugal, 1531-1533, intr., trans. and notes by Dom Maur Cocheril, 2 vols (Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 1970), I, pp. 153-55 (for this description in Catalan, see Muset i
Pons and Vives Tort, El camins romeus, pp. 69-70).
Believers would imagine themselves in another place and time: Jerusalem

at the time the Virgin lived her mortal life and daily prayed at the holy sites
of the Via Dolorosa. These versions of the via crucis served both the devotio
moderna as a personal meditation in solitude in accordance with the
mysticism characteristic of the sixteenth- and seventeenth- centuries eli-
te, and the communal practice as a very dramatic public ritual more apt to
attract the lower classes.
The idea of bringing Jerusalem to Europe in the form of devotional

complexes had already appeared in the early fifteenth century. Various
methods developed in the following centuries, through which a sacred
place was evoked, recreated, and reused in disparate contexts, engendering
sanctity in new locations and forging networks of power. The earliest
symbolical translation of Jerusalem may have been created precisely in
Spain. This was a devotional path that pertained to the Monastery of Scalaceli
(also Scala coeli, or Escalaceli) on the Sierra Morena nearby Cordoba; his
founder, Beato lvaro de Crdoba (d. 1430), who went in pilgrimage to the
Holy Land around the year 1405 and stayed there for three years, decided to
recreate Jerusalem in his homeland in order to facilitate the meditation on
the Passion of Jesus. The landscape of the Sierra Morena recalled to lvaro
de Crdoba the sacred landscape of Jerusalem, its topography, its vegetation
and its clear light; therefore, in 1423 he built there a monastery and established
a via crucis on a path that climbed from his cell to a hill that rose at about
the same distance that he measured from the city of Jerusalem to the site of
the crucifixion. lvaro de Crdoba called this hill Calvary, and the surrounding
mounts and valleys Garden of Gethsemane, Mount of Olives, Cedron River
and Mount Thabor.87 He would nightly walk on his knees all the way up to
the three crosses rising on Mount Calvary, praying and meditating in the
caves and small chapels along the path, and practicing severe penances.
However, as well-known, the translations of Jerusalem gained greater
significance and diffusion in Catholic Europe only after the Council of Trent
(15451563). Not by mere chance, at about the same time the symbolical
parallels between Montserrat and Jerusalem were being established. Most
important in our context, according to the Dominican friar Juan de Ribas,
in his Vida y milagros del B. Fray Alvaro de Crdoba, del Orden de Predicado-
res, which was published in Cordoba in 1687 that is to say only ten years
after Gregorio de Argaiz spread the legend associating the configuration of
Montserrat with the Golgotha the devotional path at the Monastery of
Montserrat was signalled as a central and basic source of inspiration to the
Via crucis at the Monastery of Scalaceli; this via crucis must have been
later than the path of cells and crosses that Beato Alvaro established around
the years 1423-1425. Juan de Ribas points to this conceptual relation
87. See Bonet Correa, Sacromontes y calvarios en Espaa, pp. 174-213 (pp. 178-79).
374 L ILY A RAD
independently of the actual chronology of the devotional path at Scalaceli.
According to the author,
Friar Saint Alvaro had decided to establish his convent in a site that
closely resembled or recalled the City of Jerusalem and the other holy
places that, as already mentioned, he had visited; and having chosen
the appropriate site, in the same manner that in the Sacred Monastery
of Montserrate there are various hermitages, he built in the Monastery
of Scala coeli various oratories and rooms that represented and brought
to memory the holy places of Jerusalem [our emphasis].88
The thematic nucleus of these devotional substitutes of the Holy City

was usually formed by the via crucis which ends with the crucifixion and
death of Jesus on the Golgotha, or by scenes from the Joys and Sorrows of
the Virgin, which we shall examine in relation to Montserrat. These and
other processional rituals, that derived from the Passion of Jesus, developed
in different parts of Europe and influenced the invention and elaboration
of the stations of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem;89 yet this was a reciprocal
process, because the general pattern of reproduction of Jerusalem and the
Holy Land within the church, churchyard, city, or village whether full-
scale or reduced, was in turn fed by pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In effect,
most patrons of translations of Jerusalem, like Beato Alvaro, claim to a
direct recreation of the Holy City after a pilgrimage; however, as evidenced
by Juan de Ribass account, translations could also be mediated by other
European replicas of the loca sancta.90 Whether enacted in concrete space
88. Tena determinado San Alvaro fabricar su convento en sitio que imitase o se pareciese a la
Ciudad de Jerusaln y los dems lugares santos que, como queda dicho, ava visitado, y
hecha eleccin del lugar referido para el convento, del modo que en el Sagrado Monasterio
de Montserrate ay varias ermitas, dispuso en el Convento de Scala coeli varios Oratorios y
estancias que representase y trajesen a la memoria los lugares santos de Jerusaln. Juan de
Ribas, Vida y Milagros del B. Fray lvaro, p. 144.
89. These themes could be extended by the interpolation of other remarkable events in the life of
Jesus and the Virgin, as well as the lives of saints. The cultic practices that developed in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries included also related devotions such as the Seven Falls of
Christ and the Rosary of the Virgin, in real and virtual pilgrimages to Jerusalem. See, among
others, Sandro Sticca, The via crucis: Its Historical, Spiritual and Devotional Context,
Mediaevalia, 15 (1993), pp. 93-125, and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, Alternative Routes: Variation
in Early Modern Stational Devotions, Viator, 40: 1 (2009), pp. 249-70.
90. This was a legitimate means of translation. To keep to the Iberian Peninsula, we will note the
case of the administrator of the Sanctuary of Las Ermitas (O Bolo, Ourense), D. Domingo Jos
Rodrguez Blanco, who in 1730 decided to establish a via crucis like those built by San Carlos
Borromeo in his archbishopric of Milan, or those found in many sanctuaries in Portugal,
especially the via crucis built by D. Rodrigo de Moura Teles, Archbishop of Braga [... therefore]
he went [to Braga] and carefully took the measures between the stations, and immediately after
he returned he begin the construction. See Manuel Contreras, Historia del clebre Santuario
de Nuestra Seora de las Hermitas, situado en las montaas que baa el ro Bibey en tierra del
Bollo, Reyno de Galicia y Obispado de Astorga, corregida y aumentada y mandada estampar
de rden del Ilustrsimo Seor Don Francisco Isidoro Gutierrez Vigil, del Consejo de S. M. y
Obispo de Astorga (Salamanca: Francisco de Toxar, 1798 (first ed. 1736)), pp. 58-84.
(with or without the aid of external devices such as sculptural installations),

or simply imaginatively (at times with the aid of a guiding text or set of
printed images), these practices structured their own performance, leading
the user through an orderly and systematic contemplation of the sacred
narratives.
Montserrat and Scalaceli are paradigmatic of the multilayered
conception and function of the devotional New Jerusalems that proliferated
after the Council of Trent. They are based on a conceptual rapport and a
symbolical rather than a physical similarity, and were extended by the
interpolation of other remarkable events in the life of Jesus and the Virgin,
as well as the lives of saints. Our last example is one of the earliest sacred
mounts in Spain, and combined features of devotio moderna from different
sources with the Counter-Reformation ideology: Monte Celia in Guadalajara,
which was built by the Prince-Friar Pedro Gonzlez de Mendoza at the
beginnings of the seventeenth century. According to a legend dated c. 1236,
a miraculous image of the Virgin had been found at that site. Most
significantly in our context, in his Historia del Monte Celia de Nuestra Seo-
ra de La Salceda (Granada, 1616), the founder notices the many reasons to
erect a sacromonte at La Salceda. For example, he praises the Knights of
St. Johns deeds in the Holy Places and in the conquest of Jerusalem, and
tells that the knights later chose to settle in the lands of La Alcarria because
they recalled those of the Orient. 91 Friar Pedro points to the similarity
between the landscapes of the Castle of Zorita and the Mount of Olives; a
mount between Alcocer and Pareja that houses the monastery of Monsalud,
and Mount Carmel; the mount between Cifuentes y Trillo that houses the
monastery of Our Lady of Oliva, and Mount Sinai; Mount Altamira at la
Bujeda, and Mount Thabor, and lastly, writes Gonzalez de Mendoza,
especially stands out the resemblance between Mount Celia, the most
important of all the Alcarria and the site the sanctuary of Our Lady of La
Salceda, and Mount Zion the oldest emplacement in Jerusalem, where
Solomon built the Temple of God.92 The Mount Celia complex was centred
on the miraculous image of the Virgin and the Passion of Christ, but included
scenes from Jesuss childhood and hermitages dedicated to various saints.
The hermitage of the Calvary with the Tomb below it, and that of the Descent
from the Cross were located in the Camino de la Amargura (Path of Grief);
the hermitage of the Descent housed the Fifth Sorrow of the Virgin the
Mother holding his dead Son, an isolated Piet.
The reliance on the figure of the suffering Virgin to arouse the emotions
of the worshipper is most evident in those religious movements and literary
91. Chapter 9, esp. pp. 55-56, 61-63.

92. Idem, Chapter 4, pp. 19-22. See also Pedro Jos Pradillo Esteban, Via Crucis, Calvarios y
Sacromontes: Arte y Religiosidad Popular en la Contrarreforma (Guadalajara, un caso
excepcional), (Guadalajara: Diputacin Provincial de Guadalajara, D.L. 1996), esp. pp. 245-
83 for a detailed description and iconographic study of La Salceda.
376 L ILY A RAD
forms that fostered the new, affective veneration of Christs Passion. One
can trace the increasing prominence of the Virgin in empathetic Passion
meditation as these devotions moved from monasteries in the twelfth
century, to the popularizing religiosity of the Franciscans and the Dominicans
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and subsequently to lay
communities as well. The path of the Joys and Sorrows of the Virgin, in the
way from Collbat to Montserrat, was an expression of this popular devotion.
Probably, those who went to venerate the Virgin and ask for her intercession
at her sanctuary, prepared themselves spiritually and emotionally by
meditating and praying in front of each of the seven crosses.
Through repetitive cultic acts of devotion, the religious events become
an integral part of the identity of the site, detached from historical time;
events and site acquire a timeless, ever-present magical character. Thus,
the many symbolical references to Jerusalem in the interpretations of
Montserrats location and distinctive shape, as well as the seven crosses in
the way from Collbat calling to an identification with Mary in her sorrowful
path along the Via Dolorosa, point to the presence of Jerusalem, an invisi-
ble presence that is not less real. These places also are a text that can be
read: if you know the legend, you will see the steep cliffs and deep cracks
and, at the same time, you will remember the religious origins of this
physical phenomenon: the great grief of the Mountain of Montserrat at the
moment of the death of Jesus that mirrors the split apart of the Golgotha;
similarly, the crosses will evoke the via crucis of Jesus and the daily ritual
performed by his Mother, and induce pious meditation.
We should recall that Abbot Garcias de Cisneros of Montserrat was one
of the first Spanish mystics who adopted the practices of the devotio moder-
na in his use of meditative techniques, and published his Ejercitatorio de la
vida espiritual (Exercises for the Spiritual Life) at Montserrat in 1500; his
book dealt with formal prayer and meditation, and exerted much influence
not only in the sixteenth but also in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. 93 Significantly, in the seventeenth century the devotio moderna
laid emphasis on the importance of seeking Jerusalem within, another
form of migration of the sacred that shifts attention from the geographical
to a mental ideal image of Jerusalem. In effect, both in Judaism and
Christianity (but not only), the divine or the sacred is not merely a
transcendent entity out there; it also is a presence in the depths of the
self. The most important space was the inner space of the believer.
Therefore, the deep emotions experienced in these sacred spaces nurtured
the religious self and developed the religious identity.
93. Albareda, Bibliografia, p. 35. Not the least of all, Garcias de Cisneross Ejercitario also
influenced Ignatius de Loyola, who experienced Christs call in 1522 while staying at the
Montserrat Abbey. Many of Abbot Garcias de Cisneross ideas were elaborated in Loyolas
Spiritual Exercises (1522-1524), which in turn influenced the spiritual life of the monks of
Montserrat. See John C. Olin, The Idea of Pilgrimage in the Experience of Ignatius Loyola,
Church History, 48 (1979), pp. 387-397 (p. 390). DOI: 10.2307/3164532.
EMBLEMATIC IMAGES OF MONTSERRAT

Each sanctuary builds its identity on its singular features, and the vi-
sual images in its history books illustrate the set of concepts and norms
that it aims to impart to the faithful. Montserrat bases its identity mainly on
the symbolical interpretations of its location and unique configuration, and
on the prodigious image of the Virgin that it houses. These narratives also
created the iconography of its representative images. Since the establish-
ment of a printing press in Montserrat in 1499, these images became a
most direct and effective means of diffusion of information and indoctrination
to all layers of society.
We distinguish between emblematic and narrative representations.
Emblematic representations concentrate the characteristic elements
of an object or a concept to facilitate a clear identification. From this
point of view medals, objects that became popular since the fifteenth
century,94 are a most suitable medium to study the development of
emblematic representations: the reduced size of their format, and their
function as identifier of those who wear them as members of a
brotherhood, or as pilgrims, or as devoted to a specific saint, image, or
miraculous event require an optimal selection of representative elements.
Naturally, these elements will usually be adopted in the creation of vi-
sual narratives too.
The Virgin holding the Child who saws the mountains pinnacles is the
typical iconographical scheme in medals. Interestingly, as Concepcin
Alarcn Romn notes, while in the various texts on Montserrat the Virgin
is the main protagonist and the Child has no significant role, in these
emblematic images the Child has an important function as a signifier that
identifies the Montserrat Mountain. Indeed, also in printed illustrations
and stamps from the fifteenth and sixteenth century these basic iconographic
elements are always present and stand out among the six recurring
elements: the mountain, the image of the Virgin and the Child, the sanctuary,
the hermitages, the way to the shrine, and pilgrims going up and down
that way. We point again to an example that we already saw: the illustration
opening Pere de Burgoss Libro de la historia y milagros hechos a invoca-
cin de Nuestra seora de Montserrat (Fig. 1), in the Pere de Montpezat
edition of the year 1550. Yet, in view of its smaller size, the logo on the title
page of that same edition presents only the basic identifiers: the mountain
with a cross on top of one of its peaks, a large figure of the Virgin holding
the Child who saws the cliffs, and a scheme of the sanctuary.
What puzzled us at the beginnings of this study is that the image of the
Virgin with the Child serrating the mountain continued to be an important
part of the emblematic representation of Montserrat in many of the
94. Manuel Forast, Les primeres medalles de Montserrat, Acta numismtica, 17-18 (1988),
pp. 299-305 (p. 299).
378 L ILY A RAD
seventeenth-century images.95 As well remembered, at that time the highly
significant perception of Montserrat as a mountain that, similarly to the
Golgotha Hill, cracked out of grief over the death of Jesus, became the
nucleus of the most widespread exegesis to the amazing shape of the
Catalonian mountain. In other words, the explanation to the unique
configuration as a result of the wish of the child Jesus to assist pilgrims by
sawing the mountain had become less significant than an explanation based
on the deep grief over the cruel death experienced by the adult Jesus to
redeem all believers. What is more, in order to make this argument even
sharper we may say that the Passion and redeeming death of Jesus had a
strong resonance in the history of Montserrat.
Most probably, more than one factor made the image of the Mare de
Du depicted against the background of the Montserrat Mountain a better
means to maximize the appeal and effectiveness of medals, stamps, and
other representative images. First and foremost, the devotional complex
developed around the cult of the miraculous image of the Virgin; the image
was the focus of pilgrimage, the raison dtre of the complex. Its cult was
justified by the fifteenth-century widespread tradition that dated the image
at the beginnings of Christianity, and later added that it was crafted by St.
Luke in Jerusalem, or sculpted by Nicodemus and painted by St. Luke at a
time when the Virgin was still living her mortal life, that is to say, directly
observing her sacred person.
Not the least, from a theological and spiritual point of view Maria was
largely perceived as the kindest intercessor, her apotropaic powers were
well-known, her example as Mater dolorosa was highly moving, and her
compassion and therefore her assistance in obtaining indulgences made
her the object of the prayers of all Catholic believers. These qualities were
rightly appreciated by the monks in charge of the promotion and spread of
the devotion to the Montserrat marian image and its sanctuary, and indeed
they took profit of all the symbolical layers of meaning when selling the
cultic objects to visitors. All in all, these same qualities made the iconic
image a most valuable asset and successful weapon in the service of the
Counter-Reformation.
Lastly, from the point of view of its visual perception and therefore its
propaganda potential, this was an iconic image easily recognizable and
remembered.96 It could well be that an allusion to the splitting of cliffs and
rocks at the death of Christ on the cross would shift the focus from the
95. Forast, Les primeres medalles, passim. This iconography may have been the source of a
novelty in the exhibition of the sculpted image in the sanctuary, in the 1660s at the latest: a
saw in the hand of the Child, which in turn may have reinforced the printed images and other
cultic objects in the second half of the seventeenth century. For the saw in the hand of the
Child see Laplana, La imatge de la Mare de Du, p. 27.
96. We should note that some of the iconographical types of the Montserrat medals present in
the reverse an image of the Crucifixion. See Forast, Les primeres medalles. See type V, p.
essential miracle-working image of the Virgin, whereas the venerated iconic

image of the Mare de Du and the Montserrat Mountain in itself would
confirm the presence of God at the site and virtually transfer the pilgrims
to the Heavenly Jerusalem.
We should note that the mental associations between Montserrat and
Jerusalem spread by history books, sermons, canticles, poems, and songs
as in the earliest known appearance of the legend equating Montserrat
and the Golgotha in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and especially since the
metaphorical descriptions blossomed in the early sixteenth century became
part of the collective memory and national identity of Catalonia. The work
of the Montserrat monk Jacint Verdaguer i Santal, one of the most
prominent literary figures of the Renaixena, the national revival movement
of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century, mirrors better than
any other work the spiritual perception of Montserrat and its symbolism,
largely based on the absent and at the same time very intense presence of
Jerusalem in the mountain. Describing Jerusalem as he perceived it from
Sant Sabas in 1886, Verdaguer i Santal emotively expressed his religious
identity and national aspirations, which mirrored those of most Catalans:
The deep and distant whispers of the sacred waters of the Cedron that
divide in two parts that mystical region like the stream of Santa Maria
separated in two parts the Thebes and Thebaid of Montserrat, whose
prayers, so pure and fragrant canticles would arise to the throne of the
Almighty! Of the bottom of each bush would sprout a wave of perfume,
of each rock a sigh of love, of each heart a rondeau of the most
harmonious and beautiful hymn that had been risen from the earth.97
CONCLUSIONS
The fundamental myths and narratives of the Montserrat Mountain and
the sanctuary at its heart, an inseparable whole by divine will, are based
on biblical and local stories that refer to Jerusalem and harness the senses,
in order to intensify the experience of the divine. The cliff-like shape, after
which the massif is named, reflects the result of its deep grief over the
death of Jesus in analogy to the Golgotha. Significantly, the Virgin chose
302, with Mary and John at the sides of the cross; type XII, p. 304, with the Virgin and saints,
and type XIV, p. 304, with the Crucifixion and first stage of the Descent; the illustrations
appear in page 305. We would not say that this scene represents the symbolic association
between Montserrat and the Golgotha.
97. Los murmuris pregons y llunyans de les sagrades ayges del Cedron, que mig parteix exa
mstica regi, com el torrent de Santa Mara parta en dues la Tebes y Tebayda de Montserrat,
ab qunes oracions, cntichs tan purs y flayrosos sen pujaren al trono del lAltssim! De cada
peu de mata brotara una alenada de perfum, de cada roca un sospir damor, de cada cor una
posada de lhimne ms armonis y bonich quhaja sortit de la terra. Dietari dun pelegr a
Terra Santa (Barcelona: Ilustraci Catalana, 1899), p. 38.
380 L ILY A RAD
Montserrat as the sanctuary for her miraculous image, crafted by St. Luke,
dressed by her, and brought to Iberia by St. Peter; moreover, the split of
the mountain made possible its miraculous invention.
The equation Montserrat Golgotha corresponded to the philosophical
and theological concepts of the late Middle Ages, the devotio modernas
ideal of an inner identification with Jesuss suffering, such as in the perfor-
mance of a mental via crucis or Marys path of Sorrows, since it laid
emphasis on the importance of seeking Jerusalem in the depths of the self
a form of migration of the sacred that shifts attention from the geographical
to a mental ideal image. Therefore, their Jerusalemite origins suffice to
turn the mountain and the Virgins image into carriers of the special
blessings of the Holy City: in accordance with medieval thought, they
participated in a mystical unity with their prototypes. Thus, even though
physical similarities between Montserrat and Jerusalem seem to exist only
in allegories, both justify the perception of Montserrat as a symbolical
translation of Jerusalem as supported by the arguments presented herein.
Pere de Burgos, Libro dlos Milagros hechos a invocacin de nra seora de Montserrate: y dela
Fundacion Hospitalidad y Orde de su sct casa; y del Sitio della y dsus hermitas (Barcelona:
Pere de Montpezat, 1550), opening illustration (Courtesy of the Monastery of Our Lady
of Montserrat Library).
382 L ILY A RAD
Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfons X (Escorial, MS T.I.1 (EI), Manuscrito Rico), Cantiga
no. 113, Por razon tenno dobedecer as pedras Madre do Rei, que quando morreu por nos sei que
porend se foron fender (Courtesy of the Monastery of Our Lady of Montserrat Library).

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345

* University of Jerusalem. To Jaume Figueras and Maria Figueras..

Venite, ascendamus ad montem Domini, ad domum dei Jacob, calls Pere

1. The book is commonly referred to as Libro de la historia y milagros hechos a invocacin

Four factors lead to propose that Jerusalem is invisibly present in

An indirect support to our proposition is the spread of various types of

Indeed, within the category of visual carriers of Jerusalems presence,

14. Anselm M. Albareda, Historia de Montserrat (Publicacions de lAbadia de Montserrat, 1996),

ST. MARY THE JERUSALEMITE AND MONTSERRAT

The earliest known illumination that presents the sacred marededu

21. Idem, p. 20.

to work great miracles.29 To resume, ever since the mid-seventeenth century

MONS IN QUO BENEPLACITUM EST D EO HABITARE IN EO (PS 67 (68), 17)

32. Christian, Apparitions, p. 111.

Significantly, as noted above, Pere de Burgos specified that God himself

A TRANSLATED AXIS MUNDI

45. Olivier, Histoire de labbaye, p. 194.

repetitive accounts of pilgrimages.48 The wonders they saw included the

The Montserrat Mountain and sanctuary perfectly corresponded to all

4 8 . Nieves Baranda, El camino espiritual a Jerusaln a principios del Renacimiento, in

between these poles. 50 We would say that Montserrat can be perceived as

TRASLADADA EN ESSA S ION, NUEVA J ERUSALEN, MONTAA DE MONSERRATE,

The image of biblical Jerusalem surrounded all around by a crenellated

between Catalonian sacred mountains and Jerusalem, or between them

The religious interpretation of the special shape of Montserrat that

66. Barcelona: Joseph Giralt.

Historia compuesta en vista de los documentos existentes en el archivo del

73. Idem, pp. 10-12.

The literature on the history of Montserrat is extensive and rich in legends

Believers would imagine themselves in another place and time: Jerusalem

The idea of bringing Jerusalem to Europe in the form of devotional

The thematic nucleus of these devotional substitutes of the Holy City

(with or without the aid of external devices such as sculptural installations),

91. Chapter 9, esp. pp. 55-56, 61-63.

EMBLEMATIC IMAGES OF MONTSERRAT

essential miracle-working image of the Virgin, whereas the venerated iconic

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